All the Things We Cannot Hear
by RoboticRainboots
Summary: A retelling in which Alphonse is deaf, things don't go as planned, and getting their bodies back is just a little bit harder. [Updates every other Sunday, 13 chapters total]
1. Chapter 1

The act of dying is a quiet one. Death is a silencing, an ending to all sounds.

Alphonse Elric knows what it feels like to die. He knows the very sensation of having his soul ripped mercilessly from his body.

He knows what it's like to die painfully. He knows the ache and suffering of feeling his body smashed into a million pieces like shattered glass.

He watches as his skin peels away, breaking into millions of jigsaw puzzle pieces as he reaches with terrified fervor for his brother's hand. All the little pieces dissolve into nothing and a tormenting pain fills him as it happens. He knows what pain feels like, he knows the stinging of a scraped knee when he trips by the rivers and falls onto the rocks. He knows what it's like to have his breath knocked out of him with a single blow to the stomach by Teacher, the blunderous, heavy pain that makes him want to puke up his guts when there's nothing there to expel.

He's familiar with hurting, but those injuries are nothing to him now. They're simple inconveniences, little annoyances compared to the very real act of having thousands of hands pull him to pieces, each so damn greedy for an inch of flesh.

Al doesn't hear himself scream as he goes. He doesn't even remember if he _did_ scream.

It's such a minute detail, whether he screamed or not, but it keeps Al up for nights after all is said and done (though it wasn't as if he has anything else to do during the long, sleepless nights with a body that doesn't allow for rest.) On the fifth night after, as he sits bundled as small as he can make himself–which isn't very small at all–at his brother's bedside like a silent guardian, he comes to the conclusion that like everything else in his life, his death was silent as well.

There were no feral cries as he went, the great silencing consumed even that.

**.oOo.**

To Edward, Resembool is described in the language of sound. While it's the rushing greens and endless blues, there's a depth to the auditory, noisy parts of the sleepy, little town that the world of purely visuals will never be able to capture. To him, Resembool is the lowland hum of the breeze in the gently rocking hills, the march of the spruce and oak, the dubious call of the crickets in the summertime when the heat comes back and daytime turns to dusk. Resembool is the sound of Winry's screams as she chases a barking Den across the porch, his brother's laughter as he watches on. It's the sound of the laundry his mother has just strung across the clothesline, waving and whipping in the breeze like a white flag of surrender, her pleasant singing as she works.

It's the melody of each sound like music playing together in the Resembool symphony.

Ed doesn't remember a time before his brother was born. A year and two months isn't very long, not long enough to produce any withstanding memories when you are only an infant without a language to take information in with. Alphonse has always just been a constant in his life, and ever-present figure that he would give the world for.

But he does remember the sounds, and though they are still the same sounds that continue to play even after his brother is born, they hung more vibrant, more clear in his mind before.

**.oOo.**

To Alphonse, Resembool can only be described in colors and images. He knows there are sounds to it, he's been told so by everyone he meets, but that still doesn't change the fact that the world is only a visual one for him. And how can it not be, when Al has never been able to hear any of it?

He knows that the birds sing in the morning, that syllabic words fall from open mouths when humans speak to one another, but he could never tell you what those things sounded _like_. They're the things he cannot ever know.

Al was too young when his mother died to remember any of the specifics of his condition. She'd told him before, he knows she had, but she died when he was only four and the memory of those details have been long since lost. All he remembers is that he's been deaf since birth, that there has never been a time in his life when he has been able to hear a single word spoken to him, just something broken in his body, in his ears, that refuses to allow him to hear.

Bodily, not cognitive.

So he cherishes the things he does have.

There are the flashing stars in the midnight sky when the clouds are nowhere in sight. There are the reflective ripples of the lake where the willow branches hang low and the lily pads float.

There's oh so much to see. He doesn't even have time to miss what he'll never know.

**.oOo.**

Ed watches the silver knife his father holds. It gleams in the sunlight and slices the chocolate cake into little pieces, perfectly sized for rampant devouring. A slice for him, a slice for Mom, one for Al, for all the neighborhood kids. There's music playing from a portable radio somewhere, balloons tied to the back of Al's chair. The sky is so big and so blue on this particular afternoon, even the sun celebrates as it shines brighter than ever on his brother's birthday. It's what he deserves.

It's one of the last good memories he has where Hohenheim is still present. It's a simpler, happier time. One before Mom died, before Hohenheim walked out on them, before the world went to shit and Ed could feel himself pushing up his lungs through his throat as he screamed Al's name with more desperation than should have been humanly possible.

It's Al's third birthday today. Ed feels a sense of pride in his brother swell up in his chest, he isn't sure why, but he knows loves his brother and he can feel it burning there in his heart. It's the good kind of burning, the kind where the heat warms your insides like those handheld heaters Auntie Sara gives them in the wintertime.

Before they cut the cake though, Mom lights the candles and the congregation sings _Happy Birthday_ with smiles plastered across their lips. Al may not be able to hear the song, not able to know the words they're singing, but he understands the sentiment anyway. It's like their souls have been intertwined since the day Ed was born. Al's like his mate of the womb, just born a year too late. Ed can read his brother the way they read the alchemy books they sneak from their father's study: with absolute clarity.

When the cake has been eaten and the gifts opened, the party continues. A couple of boys their age fan out across the field behind their house.

"Hey, Ed!" one boy, Jason, calls out, running up to him. "You want to play ball with us?"

Jason is the kind of boy who is invited not because either Ed or Al are particularly good friends with him, but because his mother was always super kind to their family, sending them her homemade jams and other goods during the summertime. His hair is bright red, making him impossible to miss, a factor that he uses to his advantage since he is always acting the part of gang leader when it comes to boys their age.

"Sure. Let me go see if Al wants to play too," Ed responds, spinning on his heels to find Al.

"No, not Al. Just you."

"What? Why not Al?"

Ed looks back at his brother who's sitting at Mom's feet with Winry, the two of them making flower crowns together. Ed sees the way he smiles as Winry puts the flowers she's just weaved together across his head, making him look like a golden fairy prince. She signs something to him, Ed's too far away to see exactly what, but it makes Al's face light up in laughter.

"Well because," Jason starts, but it seems almost like his confidence has been taken down a notch as he says the next part at half the volume as before. "It's just–well no offense or anything, but your brother's just kind of weird."

"What do you mean he's _kind of weird_?" and Ed's voice takes on a dangerous edge at the insult of his brother.

"Well he doesn't talk and he doesn't listen to any of the rules either," Jason says, his confidence returning as two other boys run up to see what's taking them so long, flanking either side of Jason.

"Because he's deaf, stupid! Besides, he does talk." Ed's voice is almost a shout now as he grows furious over the harassment directed towards his brother.

"Yeah, he talks to _you_ with his weird hand motions. Look, Ed, all I'm saying is that we don't want to play with him. You understand, don't you?" He says it with a smile like that's the most reasonable request in the world.

They stare at each other for a moment, Ed's golden eyes into Jason's green ones. They don't say anything and Jason smiles cockily like he thinks he has almost successfully convinced Ed to leave his brother behind while they play the game.

_Almost._

"Leave." Ed states with his voice like hard ice. He doesn't shout it or scream it, he simply says it as a murderous threat.

Jason blanches, spudding out an exasperated 'what?'

"I said leave," Ed says again, pointing out beyond the hill in the direction he knows Jason lives. "Get out of my sight and don't come back."

It feels like the world stands frozen, Jason's two silent buddies looking on with wide eyes, blinking at Ed's proclamation. And then Jason's face contorts as he begins to cry, running up to his mother who sits talking with Aunt Sara.

Ed smirks. _So the little brat isn't so brave after all._

Trisha repeatedly apologizes as Jason's mother takes her bawling son home. She tries to get Ed to apologize too, not knowing the context of the argument, but he refuses to her dismay.

Al looks on perplexed, and when his and Ed's matching golden eyes meet, he cocks his head to the side in question.

_I'll tell you later_, Ed signs, though he has no plans to tell Al at all.

It's odd to Ed to know that people think of Al so differently just because he can't hear. It doesn't make him different than anyone else, he's smart, he loves animals, he's just as playful as any other kid in the town, but that doesn't stop people from forming some unreasonable bias against him before they haven't even taken the time to get to know him. It makes an anger against the world bubble up inside of Ed like hot lava and he's a volcano ready to spill over.

How dare they treat him so differently for something so unimportant.

Later that night Trisha asks Ed what his and Jason's fight was about while Al is up in the bathroom brushing his teeth. Ed knows his mother is mad that he caused such a big scene during his brother's birthday party and ran off one of the guests, but when he tells her the reason behind making Jason cry, she simply purses her lips and nods her head. Ed is sure that she must know exactly what it's like to hear someone say something about Al and get upset, he's seen her outraged without every saying why enough times to know exactly that.

Ed knows this father is listening on from the kitchen where he's washing all the dishes from today's party. He's so stoic and quiet though. Ed never knows what to make of him.

It was Van Hohenheim who was the one who introduced them to sign language in the first place, so maybe that act said more than any of his words ever did.

It didn't take long after Al was born to realize he didn't respond to certain things the way most babies did. He didn't turn his head at the sound of his mother's voice, didn't startle at loud noises.

Urey and Sara were doctors, and it had been Pinako who had delivered Al, but all three of them were far from experts on matters of deafness. Still, it wasn't that hard to figure out. It was clear in his overly wide, golden eyes and his changeling-like quiet that alerted them to that conclusion.

Upon hearing this, Van spoke up about sign language. He had been good friends with an alchemist who was deaf and had learned quite a bit of the non-verbal language himself. No one questioned how Van had met the deaf alchemist or when he had had time to learn sign language, but Hohenheim had been an enigma to all them for so long now that they never asked. He always seemed to be so full of knowledge that they'd learned not to question it, only Trisha and Pinako looking on with knowing eyes.

So they learned at the same time as Al did. No one had seen Trisha devote herself to something the way she devoted herself to learning sign language and then teaching it to Al. She scoured every place she could for books, for knowledge, anything that would help her teach her son to communicate better with the world.

Naturally, Ed learned it beside his baby brother with that innate curiosity that burned inside of him from the day he was born. At such a young age they had taken to it so instinctively, and before they knew it, the entirety of the Elric family communicated more through sign language that they did through the spoken word.

The Rockbells had learned to sign as well, and soon Al had an even bigger pool of people which he could communicate with. Sara and Urey weren't as good as it as Winry and Pinako were, going away to treat soldiers on the front lines of the battlefield hadn't allowed them much time to practice, but they tried their bests.

And for a long time that had simply been their world. Mother and Father and the Rockbells on the adjacent hill and the entire sleepy world of Resembool laid out in front of them. There was no need to leave their sugar sweet bubble.

Not until Mom died.

**.oOo.**

Learning to read becomes one of the single greatest blessings Al has yet to experience. He never realized how limited his world, his perspective, was before then. Understanding the ink on the pages opens his mind to so many more sets of eyes than just his own. Where his world had been limited only to the voices of the seven people he'd learned to communicate with before, now it is open to infinite possibilities.

Each book he reads has a different voice, a different tone. Every author has eaten a different slice of the pie of life, and so Al greedily consumes the crumbs they leave behind on their plates in the form of words on the page.

He starts his reading with novels, with fantastical stories about kids traveling on adventures around the world, about a princess who rides dragons everywhere she goes, about a fox who fights only to save his kin. Infinite windows have been opened to him.

Gradually, Al shifts what he reads from fiction to other texts. He exhausts the books that he and Ed share on the bookshelf in their room pretty quickly. He's a wildfire of reading and he can't seem to slow down. There is, however, no shortage of alchemy books that seem to bleed out of every nook and cranny of their household. There're stacks of them in Mom's room, sitting on the mantle in the living room, he's even found them absentmindedly placed on a shelf of the pantry once or twice.

And then there's his father's study where the books are as numerous as stars.

After Dad leaves, when realization that he's not come back has had its time to fully set over the house, Ed locks himself in their shared bedroom for two days and refuses to leave. This annoys Al to no end, but even worse than that, Ed has locked all the books away along with himself.

Perhaps that is how Al finds himself standing in their father's basement study, looking up at the spines of hundreds of books. All of them are different, thicker than any books Al has ever known. Their titles are often long and full of unwieldy vocabulary that Al isn't even familiar with. Some of them aren't even in Amestrian.

Al scours the shelves until he finds one that looks suitable. _The Beginner's Guide to Alchemy_, the golden letters that loop across the red cover read, and it seems like as good of a starting place as any. Simply the first book in a mile-long series.

With small hands, Al cracks open the spine of the book, sits down in his father's wooden, spinning chair with his legs dangling from where he perches, and begins to read.

The pages are sometimes old, yellowed like they are the papery leather skin of a person alive past expiration. There's an ancient, arcane magic that resides in these pages. Words that extend beyond time, words that leap from age to age to age, never to be lost or forgotten to the wind.

Speaking, signing, both of those are so ephemeral. They're the words that last only for a moment so that they can be forgotten later on. The skies and the stars don't take record of the things said under them. But these words here, the ones that were painstakingly transcribed from thoughts to words of ink, be it by typewriter or hand, these are the words that will be buried with the earth, that will allow future generations to know ghosts of people and knowledge long forgotten.

There's a beauty to such things, one Al cannot begin to fully comprehend, but it fills him up with a sort of unknown hope.

Within a couple of days, Ed follows him. He might resent his father, but books are sacred to both of them. By the end of the week, they've both successfully performed their first transmutations and the gate to a whole new world of knowledge opens up to them.

**.oOo.**

In the early days, things had been so simple. If there was war brewing on their doorstep, they didn't know about it. If illness was about to sweep through the entire east side of Amestris, they were unaware.

There was a rhythmic simplicity to the nature of the world when they lived in ignorant, childhood bliss. Solstice in the summer and winter, the annual sheep festival in autumn, Mom's birthday in the spring. On and on the world spun as it repeated its endless cycle. There was nothing more to it.

But perhaps, lurking somewhere beneath, there was a little bit more waiting for them. Because what neither Elric knew was that there was a darkness brewing on the horizon. The Ishvalan War of Extermination was being fought in their backyard and Aunt and Uncle Rockbell were out there in it. An unidentified illness would force its way through half the region, purging a large number of people of their lives—including Mom. Illusions of sunshine could not last forever and soon the mirage would dry up.

For now though, the sun still shines.

The village marketplace is always crowded on Sundays but seems especially so this afternoon as Ed and Al push their way through the hoi polloi. After snaking through the strung of shoppers, the young boys make it to their favorite bakery. The shop is always plain, no expressive sign with its name hanging on the façade, only the standard striped awning and the glass case full of food at the front.

Whenever they run into town to do the grocery shopping for Mom, she always gives them a bit of pocket change to go buy a treat for themselves at the sweet shop.

"What can I get you boys today?" The man at the counter asks. He has a funny little mustache that always makes Al laugh and he's wearing his blue vest today, the one with the little pinstripes running vertically across the front.

"A lemon cookie," Ed calls out and the man scoops one up, placing it in a little, parchment baggie.

"And your brother?"

Ed looks over at Al. _A sugar cookie_, Al signs, _and get one for Mom too._

"Two sugar cookies," Ed repeats, paying for the three treats like a little grown up of only six years old, handing Al's cookie over to him.

The walk through the town carrying their groceries and munching on their cookies. They still need to get strawberries, Ed points out to Al by tapping the scribbled handwriting of Mom that reads _strawberries_ on the list as an indicator to Al. It's quite difficult to sign while with your hands full.

There's a simple rhythm to the village square, a practiced pattern of curtsies and bows like a marvelous dance that they perform when they go. They have an easy relation to it all, to each other.

They've lived here long enough that everyone knows them by now and knows the drill with them. Everyone knows Ed like Al's little interpreters, so they always direct questions to him to be passed onto Al. It's simple here, never having to explain themselves, everyone just knows them and knows how to treat them.

Al is a child filled with wonder. Ed hears what people say about him when Al cannot. They say his eyes are always wondering, filled up with childlike amazement. What he misses with his ears he makes up with his wandering eyes, taking in every little detail of every minute thing.

The people who don't shy away from him and his differences are usually awestruck by his kind and quiet nature. They're struck speechless by the silent language.

He's a little mystic and Ed's his handler.

The Elric brothers, though, they have an unspoken language of their own, one that's shared through gentle embraces, body language, and a million shared looks between them that speak louder than words or signs ever can. Ed wishes so dearly more people could hear Al, could understand him. He has so much to say and so few who he can say it all to.

They take the longer path home. The load of groceries this week isn't very heavy and the sun is warm on their skin.

There's a companionship in silence filled only with the singing of birds and the bleating of sheep.

The first sign that something is amiss is the door. It swings on its hinges, already ajar. Al blinks at him with wide eyes, startled for a moment because Mom would have at least made sure it was shut behind them when they left.

_It's probably just the wind that blew it open_, Ed signs the best he can, trying to maneuver the bag so he can move his hands. That doesn't make the startled look on Al's face fade though and Ed's heartbeat picks up.

His brother has intuition like a sixth sense. If Al's worried, then he should be too.

Ed goes first into the house. Sunlight floods in through the windows of the front room, and everything looks like it's covered in a layer of dust that wasn't there when they'd left. Something about it feels so off, call it instinct or magic, Ed doesn't care. All he knows is that it feels like months have passed between when he left the house to go to the market with Al a few hours ago and now.

Ed doesn't recognize the finger for what it is when he first sees it peaking out from the kitchen doorway. It's funny that he doesn't, he thinks. He spends so much time watching hands.

It's almost like she's sleeping when he sees her. Perhaps he would have thought she was if he were Al. Ed almost wishes that he was, Al can't hear the deep, wretched wheezing that squeezes from her lungs.

The bag of tomatoes he carries falls from his arm, spilling out across the room.

Ed stands there for a long time just staring, unable to move. It isn't until Al comes sliding into the room that he shifts a single muscle.

Al taps him on the shoulder, clearly wanting to tell him something, but Ed shakes his head. _No. No._

_Al doesn't hear it, he doesn't see it. Oh god._

Ed hears the tomato that Al holds in his hand tumble to the ground. It falls with a heavy thud, the impact magnified tenfold.

For a moment, one single, tiny moment Ed believes all of this must be a bad dream.

And then he screams.

**.oOo.**

Funerals are not a casual affair. Al never imagined they would be, but he's never been to one, so truth be told he has no idea. Of course, he's sure it's different when the one lying in the grave is your mother rather than some far off relative or just some woman from town.

Al can tell Ed's not listening as the eulogy is read. They hold hands where they sit in the grass by the empty hole where Mom will soon lay. Al can feel a slight tremble travel through Brother's right hand where their fingers are interlaced. Watching on, he looks at the little white flowers Ed twirls with the fingers of his left. Mom hasn't even been laid in the grave and covered up by dirt yet and she's already pushing daisies up it seems. Maybe they were an omen.

The rest of the burial and reception passes Al in a blur. He knows Granny serves some kind of lunch in the kitchen for all of those who attended the funeral, but Al doesn't have the strength to face people right now, so Granny lets him and Ed climb on up to the guest room turned their bedroom and go to sleep despite the fact that it's only a few hours past midday.

They crawl into the same bed together, never breaking their handhold, afraid that if they lose physical contact then Ed too will disappear like Mom.

**.oOo.**

Despondency shouldn't be mistaken for giving up altogether. Some of the biggest things grow out of the depths of despair. Ed is no optimist, not by miles, but he also knows that when you hit your lowest lows then things can only go up from there.

He's not waiting around for the universe to secure better days for him either, he's going to force them for himself. Sometimes the world just needs a little prodding and pushing.

He isn't sure where he gets the idea. He knows when he came catch a glimpse of the very first allusions to it, but he cannot recall what source first put the spark of it in his mind. Ed thinks perhaps it was the tiniest of footnotes in one of the books in his father's study. It wasn't anything major or of such importance that Ed would have hung onto it—of course if he was aware of what was later to come then he would have paid more attention—but it was strange enough in itself to stand out to him.

The book was on odd, arcane forms of alchemy. The weird or hardly explored forms that didn't seem to be studied much by typical alchemists.

The footnote was about artificial humans, homunculi as they were called in the sentence, but the book didn't follow it up with anything more specific and when Ed tried to cross reference it with another he came up with hardly anything at all. Whatever this form of alchemy was, it was something that was very much a well-kept secret.

And then he found it. In what was probably the oldest volume they had there was a short chapter about human transmutation with a paragraph about homunculi included. It had taken him and Al _months_ to crack the code of that volume, the longest of any of the alchemy books they owned, but the end result didn't seem much worth it. All there was were warnings about how the practice was outlawed, forbidden by decree of the state, and recounted several failed attempts of the known alchemists who had attempted it.

It wasn't anything that was important to Ed, so he put it out of his mind to be forgotten, and it was. Or it _almost_ was.

The chapter comes whirring back to him when he's baking under sun in his suit while sitting in the dirt at his mother's funeral. _Human Transmutation_, he reminds himself of the name of the practice. _To bring the dead back to life_.

Forbidden it may be, but laws mean nothing to a person whose desperation exceeds potential punishment. Some things are worth more than years in a cell.

They wouldn't just shoot down a six-year-old with a firing squad.

_Right?_

And so as he's sitting there, wallowing in his own misery and counting up worms that squirm in the soft patch of recently turned earth, and a plan forms in his mind. It's a simple plan really, but one that will be hard to execute. It will take studying and learning and maybe even years, but Ed knows if they can pull this off then it will be worth it, so very much so.

Al has a harder time falling prey to the allure of human transmutation than Ed does. He needs a bit more convincing, a bit more pushing. He always has been such a good kid, but it's time to let that go and finally decide things for himself.

When Ed finally does garner Al's approval, they lock themselves in the empire of books in their father's study and get to work. They need to learn more about alchemy, anatomy, biology. There's a lot of components that make up a human life.

It's funny how a mother can do it on accident, can create a life without even trying, but for Ed and Al it takes them every little bit of spare time they have. Mothers are no expert on humans at all and yet they can perform the world's greatest magic trick without even having to blink.

That's the irony of it all.

Mom is the one who gave birth to him and Al, the one who brought them into the world. She's the one who breathed life into their very lungs. It's only a matter of equivalent exchange now. Like she gave birth to them, they will bring about her _re_birth, they will bring her back to the world of the living for the second time around.

That must be worth something.

They're lucky their father already has so many books. There's no way they would be able to come across any kind of alchemy research here in Resembool where there isn't even a library because the town is so small. They've drawn a lucky hand in _this_ department at least.

Every book must have been read a thousand times by them by the time they come together to write out some kind of plan, some kind of formula, but still, something vital feels like it's missing. Perhaps it's that there's no one here to guide them through it, they've taught themselves all the alchemy they know on their own. There's also no one here to look up to in the case of this type of alchemy, everyone who's attempted it died in the rebound or shortly after from the wounds they sustained.

That sends a shiver down Ed's spine, but he doesn't let it get to him. He can't now, not when they've come this far.

**.oOo.**

Sometimes, after Ed has gone to sleep and Al lays there awake on his own, Al allows himself to think about Mom. He tries not to think about her whenever they're researching in the study and planning out how to carry out the transmutation. Though the transmutation is for her, about her, Al tries not to think about her then.

He doesn't want to mix her memory in with such dark matters or obscure the pure and pristine image he has of her in his mind. In case this all goes wrong, in case she doesn't come back the same, with chestnut hair like silk and a gentle shine in her eyes like starlight, he at least wants to have something good left to remember her by.

At Granny's house he sleeps in the bed closest to the window. Ed let him have it without so much as an argument. Maybe that's a testament to how much Mom's passing has changed them. Before, they would have fought for it, and though they were always close, they did have their fair share of moments of tension like any good siblings would, but now that's all gone.

Al prefers to sleep in the bed closest to the window because here he can see the stars. They dot the sky like little freckles, each one a part of its own constellation.

It makes him feel closer to Mom when he lies beside them. He knows it's stupid, a childish thing to think about, but the thought leaves him feeling protected so he doesn't stop thinking it. He likes to think that maybe she's somewhere out with the stars, that stars are what good souls become when the body has passed on.

Somewhere it's written that we're all made up of star stuff after all.

But the stars, while comforting in some sense, are still all lonely entities. Al thinks they are as lonely as he probably feels now. There's so many of them in the sky, so close together in his eyes that they're practically on top of each other, but he knows out there, in the depths of the galaxies, they are all light years apart from each other.

The irony of loneliness is that we all feel it together.

When Ed and Al were younger and they couldn't sleep, Mom used to sing to them. Well, sing to Ed, rather, but just because he couldn't hear her didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it as well. On those nights she would scoop them out of their beds and allows them to come sleep in hers. With the three of them snuggled in close, Ed would lay on her right side, curled up against her and Al on her left, his head resting on her chest.

And then she would begin to sing.

Al could never hear the words of that song, never know the lyrics that remain a secret between her and Brother even now, but there are other ways of listening. With his head on her chest, Al could _feel_ her voice. He could feel the vibrations of sound that rattled through her, the soft buzz of her lungs as she pushed up air. It didn't matter that he couldn't hear the melody, couldn't hum the tune, feeling her so alive pressed against him let him know he wasn't alone, that he was safe there in her arms. It made him feel loved.

Sometimes feeling is a greater language than the rest of them. It's a much more primal tongue, one that speaks of connection and love.

He wishes right now, would give more than anything really, just to feel that all again. So that's why he fights, that's why he pushes on through the hours of research and study. If only he can be held again and feel the words reverberate through her then he knows everything will be okay once more.

They _will_ bring her back.


	2. Chapter 2

A woman comes through Resembool one September with alchemy flowing through her blood. She's like a sorceress from Al and Winry's favorite storybooks, her millions of dark braids whipping all around her face in the storm's sharp fury. The pouring rain soaks her skin, her clothes, her hair, but it only makes her look even more enchanting. Ed and Al watch on as she single-handedly saves the entire town from being flooded over by alchemically constructing a giant dam and pushing back the surge of muddy rainwater from the river. She doesn't even use a transmutation circle!

_She's just traveling_, she says, _just a housewife passing through and lending a hand to those in need of one._

But in Ed and Al's eyes she's so much more. Not just a traveler passing through, she's an opportunity. She's exactly what the need to further their knowledge and learn the alchemy they need to bring Mom back.

If she can't help them, then nothing can. They _need _her.

They run up to her after she has been thanked by the volunteers and is now speaking to her traveling companion, her voice drowned out by the rain. The water is so high that it almost floods into the tops of Ed's rain boots as his feet squish in the mud. She sure got here in perfect time.

There's something frightening about her. Something in her dark eyes that doesn't scare Ed per se, but still makes him uneasy. Maybe it's the way she holds her shoulders high or the way her raincoat looks exactly like the one Mom used to own. Whatever it is, it makes him nervous to get her attention as he comes up behind her, his arm hovering.

The man she came here with notices him before she does and his eyes soften. Despite his large size and intimidating appearance, there is a gentleness to his expression that makes him look more understanding than her.

_Gentle giant, _Al would have described him as Ed knows, because Al's always trying to describe everyone in storybook terms.

The man makes a nonverbal gesture at the woman and she turns around, facing Ed and Al in their matching blue raincoats, now covered in mud.

"You're an alchemist," Ed says when her eyebrow raises at him and Al.

There's a stern edge to her face, but despite that, she smiles. "I know a few tricks," she replies jauntily like she didn't just transmute the most mass Ed's ever seen transmuted all at once.

He knows she's downplaying her skills and it only strengthens Ed's resolve to push harder. Who knows what all she knows that she isn't letting on? He's never seen anyone like her.

"Are you kidding? You're amazing! I've never seen anyone do alchemy without a circle!"

At this, she smiles weakly and says nothing.

"Will you be our teacher?" Ed asks, adding on a long 'please' for effect. "My brother and I are alchemists too and we're looking for someone to teach us."

The woman turns back to her companion, both their eyes flashing and saying something unspoken for a moment before she turns back down to the two small boys in front of her.

"I don't take apprentices," she states, turning and walking away.

"Please! Please!" Ed begs, chasing behind her while Al makes his best attempt at puppy dog eyes beside him. "We're really good, I promise we are!"

The woman continues to deny them until she asks them where their parents are and a man from town tells her the Elric boys have no parents. They're both dead and gone. That's the kiss that breaks the spell. Instantly her face softens, something of a wistfulness coming over her façade.

Something in that moment has changed her. Ed would have been curious what exactly it was if he hadn't been so excited about her agreeing to teach them.

They learn her name is Izumi Curtis and that the man she is traveling with is her husband, Sig, and they live in the big city of the south, Dublith. As soon as Izumi is feeling better, the four of them will take a train back to Dublith and the boys will begin training with their new teacher.

Izumi purses her lips when she finds out Al is deaf. It isn't a face that is sad or angry or even one of the nasty ones people make when they find disdain in someone so different. Ed doesn't have a word for that expression, just that it reminds him of one that Mom used to make sometimes.

Ed hates that he can't read her and it makes him want to lash out at her, their boots splashing in the rain and him pinning her down in the mud. He doesn't want her to say yes only to change her mind now that she knows. So often people get the wrong idea about Al when they find out he's deaf. They mix disability for stupidity and automatically categorize him as dumb just because of the barrier between communication. It infuriates Ed to no end every time. It's garnered him quite the reputation in town, in fact, since there has been more than one occasion when insult has turned to injury and Ed beat some kid who insulted his little brother bloody in the schoolyard.

If this woman is along that same line of bullshit thinking then forget it, she isn't worth it. They can find someone else who isn't a prejudiced piece of shit to teach them.

Funnily enough, though, the woman makes no comment on the matter at hand, only agreeing with what seems like staged reluctance to Ed and tells the boys to come.

They stay in Resembool for three more days. Ed can't figure out the specifics to their new teacher's condition, but he knows it involves a lot of stomach cramping and a lot of vomiting of blood. Teacher and her husband, Sig, are old pros at handling the situation as efficiently as possible.

"She just needs to rest," Sig tells the town doctor in his deep baritone when Izumi is taken to the only hospital room in town, save the Rockbells'. The doctor sputters in indignation, clearly wanting to prescribe her some sort of medicine or alternative, but bends under Sig's glare. Ed smirks at the situation.

_They make an interesting pair, _Ed signs to Al, and Ed smirks when he sees Izumi narrow her eyes at them, clearly frustrated that she has no idea what they're saying.

_Interesting for sure, but I think they're softer they look, _Al signs back. _She wouldn't have taken us on if she was really as mean as she tries to come off as._

Maybe, but Ed doesn't care about niceties. He isn't going to Dublith with the hopes of enjoying himself, he's going so he can figure out how to bring back Mom. Oh, that reminds him, _we shouldn't tell Teacher about what we're planning on doing._

_Why not? She might be able to help…_

_Because, it's written in every book that human transmutation is forbidden. What if she tries to stop us? What if she turns us in? _

Al brings his hands up like he wants to argue, but finally resigns them back to his sides. Ed knows he doesn't want to send the rest of his life trapped in some metal prison of the State's either.

Ed also has a deep feeling that if Teacher were to find out what they were up to, she'd try and stop them. They've only known her for a couple of hours, and though Ed can't read people as well as Al can, he can already tell she's a very by-the-books type of person. She's the kind of person that, once she figures out her own moral code, she'll refuse to deviate from it no matter what.

They leave town with Granny's reluctant blessing. She doesn't seem too keen on them going, but she doesn't argue when they tell her their plan for apprenticeship. Instead, all she does is take a deep drag on her pipe and tell them she has no right to keep them tied here. She isn't their mother after all.

Al sleeps for half the train ride, his golden head resting in Edward's lap as the train chugs on. Ed lets his brother sleep, he himself is too mesmerized by the world outside his window. He's never left Resembool before.

The earth continues to expand beyond the horizon. It's an endless sea of flowers and buildings and fields and sky. All this time it's like they've lived in a tiny snow globe, their entirety trapped in a single glass globe.

There's a whole world out there they'll never know.

It's warmer here in the south, more humid too. The moisture in the air clings to Ed like a second skin and it makes him feel icky. There're so many people here, all packed together into one space. Ed doesn't know how they can stand it. In Resembool everyone had acres and acres of meadow to themselves.

_We should go swimming, _Al signs to his brother, his brown suitcase situated awkwardly under one arm to allow him to tell Ed. _It's so warm here, I don't know how they can stand it._

Ed voices the thought to their new teacher and instantly knows it was a bad idea when she smiles that dangerous grin of her.

"That's an excellent idea. Let's go."

They take a boat across the lake, the three of them (they leave Sig behind with their traveling cases) and a man called Mason pulling the oars. They haven't even seen the quaint butcher's shop that Teacher claims they run yet.

The group makes it to an island in the middle of the lake and Teacher orders them out of the boat.

Ed has a sinking feeling they're not going swimming anymore.

It feels like a rock has been dropped in his stomach when Teacher hands him a sheathed dagger. They have to survive, one month on the island, no alchemy.

Oh, and they have to figure out the meaning of _One is All, All is One._

It's going to be a hell of a month.

**.oOo.**

_Brother, seriously, it's not a big deal, _Al signs the best he can with his left arm caught in Ed's right hand.

_Quit moving, _is all Ed signs in response, pulling Al's arm back to him and using the bottom of his shirt to dab at the cut.

Al lets out a dramatic huff of breath. The wound isn't anything serious, it's deep, sure, but it doesn't hurt much. Al's pretty sure it's better than it looks but the blood dripping out of his skin doesn't really aid his argument.

It was a rock that sliced open his arm. Al was groveling on the ground looking for something, _anything _edible, but when he swiped his arm under a log across the dirt he was cut with one of the sharp rocks on the forest floor.

_Take off your shirt,_ Ed signs, finally letting go of Al's arm dissatisfied.

_What?_

_Your white over shirt, _Ed gestures. _We can rip off one of the sleeves and use it as a bandage._

Al doesn't think that that will prevent infection any more than doing nothing to the wound at all seeing that his shirt is filthy with dirt, but he does it anyway. Al doesn't have the patience to argue with Ed right now.

Despite the cut not being such a pleasant thing, it isn't an unwelcome distraction either. It keeps his mind on the stinging of his arm rather than the clawing emptiness of his stomach.

They've been on this island for three days. Three days without food and they're both absolutely starving.

They've tried everything from fishing to trapping, but the prey always seems to slip their grasp at the very last moment. Al thinks Ed might be doing that on purpose, that he can't bear the idea of killing an innocent creature, but Ed would never admit to something like that even if he was caught red-handed, so Al doesn't bother to ask.

Al has to thank his lucky star that the water of Yock Lake is fresh water rather than salt water. They'd surely be dead if it wasn't.

If they don't find food soon, however, they'll surely starve to death.

And then there's the barbarian of Yock Island, which is a whole other matter entirely.

He wouldn't really believe their new Teacher to be so heartless that she would leave them stranded on a foodless island where their only other companion is a beast of a man in a mask who's dead set on killing them. Surely she must be unaware.

Al shakes his head and refocuses on the situation at hand when he feels the pressure of a tightening knot on his arm. The left sleeve of his button up shirt is gone (which is a shame considering Al really liked that shirt) and the makeshift bandage is already stained red with spots of blood.

Ed offers him a hand up and Al takes it, regaining his footing.

Right. Looks like they're back to searching the island for food.

**.oOo.**

There's a fire burning in Ed. It was once bright and furious, eating up all the fuel that it was fed with unseen fury. Except now it looks faded. Faded, not gone, that is, but the sharp edge of its sword is now dull.

That is the problem with primary reinforcements. They're just so hard to live without. It's thoughts of food that mindlessly consume every inch of his brain, all memories of their original purpose for being here forgotten. He can't think of anything except finding their next meal.

He's doing this all, suffering out every moment here in this dreadful place for Mom. By coming to Dublith to learn with Teacher, Ed thought it would bring him even closer to her, but now it makes her seem even farther away than ever.

First he has to worry about making sure he and Al can survive until the next sunrise, then he can think about Mom.

Ed lies on his back looking up at the stars through the canopy of trees that cover them. It seems the barbarian has called it quits for the night and crawled back to wherever his cave is or whatever.

There's a gentle melody of cicadas buzzing in the night and the grumble of his belly mixed with Al's light snore. They're not going to be chubby little kids anymore when this is over and done with. By the time they get off this island–_if_ they ever get off this island–they're going to be nothing more than sallow skins and piles of bones. They'll end up looking like that woman they saw at the Dublith station pleading for coins, draped in a blanket and rattling an empty cup.

Al's always claimed there's more kindness in this world than Ed realizes there is, that people are nicer than we give them credit for, but Ed isn't so sure. He watched as everyone passed the begging woman without a second glance.

But there are also instances that prove Al's optimistic theory of human kindness true. The barbarian, the one who has continuously tried to beat them death with his club every night, saw them sick and starving in the rain on the tenth night without enough energy to scamper away when they saw his shadow approaching, and took care of them. He let them sleep in front of his fire, made them fish to eat as they sat there and sobbed.

Perhaps the world doesn't go either way. It isn't good, it isn't bad. The world pulls in both directions, it's just a neutral player and people are the ones that set the stakes. Some people draw a lucky hand, a winning card, and some get less they deserve.

Ed rolls over to his side and watches the ants march along in their little military lines, carrying their own food back to their queen. Pieces of leaves and branches and other things Ed doesn't have a name to put to. They gather in a cluster around a corpse of one of the singing cicadas, it's voice now fallen silent as it decomposes on the forest floor.

Even the ants, the smallest and most insignificant of all the creatures, are better at finding food than they are.

It's not like they're completely useless though. They did manage to hunt a rabbit and eat its fire-cooked meat. It was hard, at first, to make the kill, but there was no way around it. Their stomachs argued too loudly for them not to skin and eat it. Ed let Al drive the knife through its heart as tears streamed from his golden eyes and fell onto the twitching corpse.

Life is so damn complex. The living must rely on the dead until the living themselves die and become the dead for the next generation. There's a never-ending cycle at play here like the spinning of the earth or the rise and fall of the tides. No matter what anyone does, no matter how groundbreaking and earth-shattering a moment may be, the cycle ends for no one.

When Mom died and Ed felt his whole world fall to pieces the cycle didn't stop. His world stopped, Al's world stopped, but no one else's did. That was their cross to bear alone, and though it changed their everything, it meant nothing to the fundamental inner workings of the world

Life doesn't care about your intentions. It doesn't care about your hopes or dreams or goals or sorrows. Life's nothing more than a neutral spectator.

And of that whole that is the earth, Ed is only a very small piece of it. From dust he was born and to dust shall he return. Only every individual part coming together and working in the machine can the whole exist.

It funnels back to the fundamental principle of alchemy. Perhaps equivalent exchange isn't a two-way street, maybe it's just one giant circle. It isn't about giving and taking, destroying and creating, it's about destroying _to _create, creating _to _destroy. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, they work together in one single flow.

Ed sits up, shocked by the revelation. _That's it! One is all, and all is one!_

He is one, one tiny, insignificant cog in the system. Nothing on his own, for cogs are just little, infinitesimal metal pieces, but together they make something greater than themselves. The world needs all its parts to run. When one gear is broken, another is created to sit in its place.

He cheers out in excitement and immediately smacks his hands over his mouth. He doesn't want to alert the barbarian of their position.

There's a renewed vigor in him now. If one is all and all is one then that means Mom is still out there, she still somewhere contained in the stratosphere. All they have to do is pin down her essence and bring her back. Conservation is the very principle upon which alchemy is founded upon. That means her soul isn't gone. It isn't contained, encapsulated in her now decomposing body, but she is made up of so many little pieces that so long as they bring them all together in the right ratio then she can come home to them.

When Teacher returns to the island to fetch them a month later, Ed tosses the knife back at her feet with the same nonchalance she displayed when she threw it to them a month ago.

He's learned to use it, learned to draw blood and wield metal against life.

"I am the one, the world is the all."

She laughs. "Is that all? Well then, let's move onto your real training."

**.oOo.**

Training is hard. There's no better word to describe it. It's a bone-weary exhausting.

But there's rather a deep appreciation that Al has for it. It feels like work,_ real work_. Al knows it takes feeling this kind of weakness that training with Teacher brings in order to become stronger.

Teacher is a firm believer in the idea that in order to strengthen the mind, one must first strengthen the body. For the first month of training, the first _real _month of training, there is no use of alchemy, no talk of it whatsoever. She won't even let then draw circles until they're fit enough to meet her standards.

This, of course, drives Ed up the wall. He goes off every chance he gets about how their teacher must be some mad woman and how this was a bad idea, but Al refuses to agree with him. He sees value in her methods. They have to build up their skill, their character, before they can build up their brains.

Body, soul, mind working flawlessly in conjunction.

Brother works double time translating every instruction Teacher gives to him. Ed will usually sign as he speaks back to her so Al can follow what he says, but he knows it has to be annoying. Teacher always seems to look at him with irritation in her eyes every time any kind of direction take twice as long to get across as it should.

Al doesn't think it's a look that stems from a place of malice though, just impatience. She's never rude to Al, not in the way Al comes to expect of people.

He and Ed are having a conversation by the display window in the butcher shop one morning when Izumi stalks up to them. Al stares up at her, ready for her to admonish them for not doing what they're supposed to, but instead, she turns to Ed and asks him something.

Ed looks back at her puzzled before opening his mouth and replying something very short. They then proceed to have an entire conversation while Al sits on and watches.

This kind of thing doesn't bother Al, he's plenty used to it by now, but it's not like Brother to leave him hanging without trying to clue Al in at least a little. Whatever it is, it must be important.

Finally, they both to turn to look at him and Al shies under their glances.

_She's asking about names_, Ed signs, catching Al off guard.

_Names? _What would she want to know about names?

Ed shrugs. _She says she's been reading up on sign language. She borrowed some book from the Dublith Public Library and has been learning what she can in her free time, but she's curious about how names work._

Al wonders why Ed doesn't just tell her himself, he knows as much as Al does.

But also the statement touches Al. She, their teacher with her piercing eyes and hardened muscles and merciless training, she went out of her way to learn this for him. No one's ever done that for him before.

_She wants a name, _Ed follows it up when Al doesn't sign anything back for a while.

Oh, that makes more sense then.

There's an unspoken rule among them that only Al is allowed to assign people names. He isn't creative with them, usually keeping them short and really more on a basis of what his relation is founded on with the person he names. She wants to be named.

A smile spreads across Al's lips. They must have picked the right teacher after all.

Al meets her eyes. _I-Z-U-M-I,_ he signs, spelling out each letter individually and waiting for her nod at the end in recognition. It's clear she knows the letters because she smiles at him understanding. He then brings both hands up to his forehead with his thumbs touching his index finger and brings the sign forward, then flattening his hands facing each other and bringing them downwards. _Teacher._

Ed laughs. _Teacher? Really?_

_What? _Al signs back, _that's what we've been calling her. It's not like I'm going to start calling her _Izumi.

Teacher repeats the action and Ed has her repeat it multiple times until Al nods his approval that she's gotten the gesture just right. They can learn from each other, alchemy from her and language from him.

She laughs at something Ed says to her and Al knows he's told her that the name simply means 'teacher'.

Next Al watches as Ed spells out his own name _E-D-W-A-R-D. _Ed's name, much like Teacher's, is less of a name and more of a title. Winry and others just call him _Ed _by spelling out the _E-D_ since it's so easy on its own, but Al always signs the word _Brother _for his name. Brother must tell her this for Al watches as she mimics the two letters of Ed's name and then the word 'brother'.

She turns to Al next. _Name? _she signs and Alphonse outwardly beams at her. She really has been practicing. He's never known anyone outside of his immediate family to do that for him.

Al spells out the letters of his name one by one slowly. _A-L-P-H-O-N-S-E. _Unlike Ed, Al has a unique sign for his name. He isn't sure where it came from, though he suspects Mom was the one who came up with it, but he knows it has always just been a part of him.

It's another little piece of his identity, one that was gifted to him like a jewel from a treasure chest.

Teacher's hands are sloppy and unpracticed as she follows the gesture, but he knows with enough practice she'll get it right.

**.oOo.**

Training is difficult and not quite what Ed first imagined it would be when he envisioned becoming an apprentice of alchemy. Ed can't decide if likes that or not.

He like the feeling that he's doing something that brings him closer and closer to reaching their goal, but it is a lot of work. But what Ed does know is that every day, every bruise and every fight, brings him one step closer to Mom. All of it will be worth it in the end for her, and _that's _what keeps him kicking through the rough times.

For Ed, Mom is like an obsession at times. She is his hopeless hope, his single aspiration. _Monomaniac_, Al once called him, but Ed doesn't care, he'll take the title.

He has resolve and stamina. Teacher tells him that. He can work for extended periods of time for so long that it impresses even her, and she is not so easily impressed.

Ed just laughs at the comment. If only she knew how long he's really been working.

And so Dublith is a breath of fresh air. It's so far removed from everything he's ever known, so different than everything that came before, yet something about it feels like home. He isn't sure if it's the atmosphere, the people. It definitely isn't the landscape or the buildings, Resembool is quite different in that regard, but something about this new temporary home of his feels safe.

Still, that doesn't discredit the moments of homesickness Ed _does _sometimes feel. Sometimes he feels like he's trapped here, trapped in a world of eternal freedom. He doesn't want freedom though, he doesn't want knowledge or power, Ed just wants Mom back.

When Ed feels like this, he bottles it up over time until the bottle breaks and shatters and the feelings spill over like fine liquor. He just makes sure it's after everyone else in the house is sleeping so no one can see him when he's weak.

Because if Ed has any other trait that matches his levels of stamina and ambition, it's his pride.

**.oOo.**

Three months into their training, Ed falls sick. It isn't a bad illness, nothing serious, probably just a cold or something, but it sends Al into a state of restless chaos.

Teacher refuses to teach them that afternoon. She says there's no point only teaching one of them and then trying to play catch up with the other once Ed has recovered. They get the day off.

Al knows that Teacher must see the small panic that this sends Al into. It isn't that Al has some fear of sickness really, that's not it. This fear stems from his mother and what's happened in the past. Mother faded just the same. She felt sick and then she died. Al knows it's irrational to think that's what's happening to Ed too, but the fear persists. What Mom had was serious, something more than a measly cold, but that doesn't mean she didn't look the way Ed looks now. Pale and sweating with his eyes scrunched close in restless turmoil. Al can't stop the fear from coming. Being sick will forever be melded with Mom's death.

Al looks up to see Teacher standing up behind him with her arms crossed in front of her chest. She's been trying to distract him, he knows, but no matter what she entices him with, nothing can pull him from his brother's bedside.

_I have someone I want you to meet, _she signs to him and Al arches one of his eyebrows.

She's picked up really quickly on their sign language and Al is really proud of her. Sometimes at night after training, when his muscles feel too stiff to move, Al'll sit with her in the living room and help her practice.

She's never had them meet any visitors. They've met some of the people in town when they pick up groceries for her from the market or other small tasks she needs done, but never anyone else that's required a formal visit to distinguish it.

Teacher promises Al that Sig will keep a good eye on Brother and not let anything happen to him and then proceeds to leads Al downstairs where he's expecting to find the visitor, but the shop is empty of people save Sig and Mason who are working behind the counter.

Al slips on his shoes when he sees Teacher nod to them and he follows her outside. She leads him through a few streets of the town until they're standing before a blue cottage a few blocks outside the center of town.

The house doesn't fall into the typical style Al's used to seeing around Dublith. Something about it reminds him more of the style of the house he would find in Resembool and it startles him that he's now deemed that as 'old fashioned' in his mind.

_I, _Teacher starts, gesturing to herself and then pausing to think. She starts again, but pinches up her face in dissatisfaction and pulls out a notepad and pen tucked away in her pocket.

Sometimes when sign language fails them, Izumi or Sig will speak to him by writing. It's easier for everyone since it's a form of language they all know, but Al's always pleased by the effort they make to try and sign to him when they can.

_We deliver to the woman who lives here from time to time. She's lived in this town longer than anyone can remember, but I think you would like to meet her. I should have thought of this sooner._

Her handwriting is a messy cursive like Brother's, but he's good at deciphering the tall letters that loop across the page. He doesn't understand what he would have to do with one of the patrons of their shop, but he's not going to question it until he actually meets the woman herself. Teacher is always full of surprises, so there's no telling what this will turn out to be.

Teacher leans over him and presses the doorbell. What looks like lightning flashes in the windows of the blue house and a moment later a woman steps out onto the porch.

Whoever Al was expecting, she isn't who he thought Teacher would have brought him to the meet.

The woman on the porch is older, probably even a couple of years older than Granny. She's wearing a flower printed dress that falls down almost to her ankles with a white, knitted shawl. There're blue and purple veins that trail down her arms like crisscrossing spiderwebs and her white hair is swept back into a bun that descends into a ponytail that falls down her back like a frozen, snow coated waterfall.

She's beautiful in a way that makes her feel like she leaped out from one of the pages of a storybook and into the real world. Al imagines how the book would describe her, _regal in a way that most people aren't, probably someone who was once very pretty._

Al does hate that common description of older characters in books simply for the implication that those characters are no longer pretty. She's probably prettier now in her older age than she ever way, Al can image. She stands with a certain grace born of wisdom, her back surprisingly straight.

The woman says nothing as she swings the door open for them and turns back into her house. Teacher nudges for him to follow when he doesn't know what to do. The white-haired woman motions for them to sit when they follow her into the parlor and Al does.

She leaves them sitting there as she stalks off into what Al presumes is the kitchen and Al looks at Teacher wide-eyed.

The room is decorated full of older things. The room doesn't look old, in fact, it's quite clean, no dust to be seen anywhere, but all the of items and artifacts that line the shelves look like they're from another time. There's a gold-framed photo of a woman in a white dress smiling with a man in a suit she locks finger with, and Al presumes this is probably the woman and her husband on their wedding day.

There's a globe on the shelf that shows Amestris still the shape it was before they annexed Ishval. A stuffed duck in flight. Several novels and cookbooks lined up in neat rows against the shelves.

_I'm going to go,_ Teacher writes on her pad of paper.

Al looks back at her confused so she goes on, scribbling in the notepad. _You'll like Mrs. Caufield, I promise._

She rises and Al flounders as he watches her go. She can't just leave him here! He'd prefer staying on the island for another month to this, but any moment now the woman who let them in is going to walk back in here, see Teacher is gone, and try to ask him about where she went off to without anyone there to respond to her. What is Teacher thinking?

When Teacher is gone, Mrs. Caufield returns out of the kitchen holding two cups of tea like she knew Teacher would be leaving. Al wrings his hands together in a nervous fit, but graciously accepts the tea with a bob of his head.

Over the rim of his teacup, Al watches the older woman take a big sip of her drink and then set the cup and saucer on the coffee table beside them. He has no idea what to do in a situation like this. Usually he has someone there to guide him, Brother's hand to hold. He isn't typically left this helpless.

_Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but your name is Alphonse?_ she signs and Al almost spills half the cup of tea on himself.

_You can sign? _He rushes out quickly, placing his cup beside hers. Teacher never told him that the woman she was bringing him to meet was also someone who spoke sign language.

_Well of course. I'm deaf too, _she smiles, clearly amused about his reaction.

The shock must show in his face, for she lights up in a laugh. _You've never met anyone who's deaf before?_

_No. I mean I know other people who can sign like my brother and Winry—our neighbor—but no one else who is _actually_ deaf._

_Well then I'm happy to be your first deaf acquaintance. _She introduces herself, signing out her name for him and Alphonse exchanges his in return.

He finds out pretty quickly that Mrs. Caufield has a rather agreeable personality. She's warm and bubbly and acts much younger than someone he expected of her years.

She tells him about her kids that moved away to Central and her husband that died a little over a decade ago. She says that in all that time she's never signed with anyone, never had a real conversation that didn't involve her spelling out the words for people on sheets of paper. He's the first person she's really talked to in ten years.

Al wonders what it must be like to lead such a lonely existence and it makes him grateful for the wonderful family he does have. Granny, Winry, and Brother, all who took up signing because they understood how necessary it is to include him in things. Sig and Teacher who, while they may not be as practiced as he and Ed, still try their damned hardest because they know that housing someone deaf under their roof means they have to take on all the necessary accessories that come with it.

He knows that she's just telling her story when she signs all of this to him, but it ignites a fear in Al that he's never had before. He doesn't want to end up like her, isolated and lonely with not a single soul to speak to. He doesn't want to be trapped in a world where no one understands him or gives him the time of day. He fears being cut off from the rest of the world like that, fears dying alone in an empty house with no voice and no one to hear him wither away.

He can't even begin to process how devastating that must be for her, and while Mrs. Caufield always remains so cheery, Al can read between the lines and see that it _has _eaten away at some part of her like a moth unraveling lonely sweaters tucked away in the dark.

During that first visit they sit there in the living room sharing stories and drinking tea for hours. When Teacher comes to fetch him once the sun has drooped, he doesn't want to leave.

He starts visiting Mrs. Caufield regularly after that. He brings Brother to meet her too because while Al knows that when he comes and keeps Mrs. Caufield company it means the world to her, she still by nature is a very social person and so meeting Ed will increase the number of people she can communicate readily with by twofold.

She shows him lots of things, and in a way, is just as much his teacher as Izumi Curtis is.

She shows him the books she learned from, the ones she had when she was seven and went deaf after a bad summer illness. She lets him look at the grainy, black and white photographs of her graduating class at the school for the deaf she attended in Central when she was young.

She teaches him about culture and people and the ways their community works—the community Al didn't even know he existed as a part of. Apparently there are whole inner workings of networks of other deaf people across the nation. There are gatherings and socials and a million other things that allow them to meet and connect on the basis of their deafness.

Most importantly, however, she teaches him the main advantage she has above him in terms of communication.

Mrs. Caufield can read lips.

She can't speak herself so the conversations that she's a part of are very one way, but she winks and tells him that it makes her an excellent secret keeper. A secret-keeper of secrets people don't know she's aware of.

It's really hard to pick up on at first, but Mrs. Caufield's a good teacher. She's had decades to practice and so she shows Al what she does know.

Mrs. Caufield is a firm believer that lip reading is _10% reading, 40% common sense, and 50% guesswork. _She also says you can go far on a firm nod and a kind smile. _No one will know you couldn't have made out any of what they just said._

It doesn't take long for Al to find out that reading Mrs. Caufield's lips is a lot easier than reading lips other's in real time. For one, Mrs. Caufield cannot actually speak herself, so when they practice she just imitates the shapes that people make. He also finds out that when she tries with him, she moves her mouth in a way so where she is speaking slowly and clearly.

But the real world is not so kind. People talk fast. There's facial hair and a lack of eye contact and people putting their hands in a way that covers their mouths whenever they speak to worry about. Also lighting is one of the biggest factors that Al never really thought about either. Mrs. Caufield's house is always very nicely lit, but the real world not so much. There's the sun in his eyes and when the sun sets in the evening, well that's a whole other hell.

Lip reading is nice when it works, but it's neither a very convenient nor flexible skill.

But on some level he already gets that. He can't sign with anyone when there isn't any light either. Darkness is the limiter to his language. However, the people he does actually sign with have already grown accustomed to that so it's never an actual problem.

It's nice for Al to have company that understands him though. Brother understands him fine, so does Winry and everyone else, but there's a bond he shares with Mrs. Caufield that he just can't explain. Maybe it's the whole _deaf culture_ aspect to things that she told him about. They connect in a way that Al's never connected with anyone before.

Most afternoons, after his training with Teacher, they'll sit on her porch and drink lemonade (Mrs. Caufield makes the best lemonade in the world!) while her cat sits on the railing like a bird ready to leap into flight at any moment.

They people-watch, mostly, and sign while they do it.

_Do you see the woman there, the one in the green dress?_ Mrs. Caufield asks him one afternoon. _She was supposed to marry my son. She already bought the dress and everything, but things never went through._

_Why didn't they marry? _Al asks back, sure she has some long-winded story to go with it. Mrs. Caufield is filled with interesting stories about all the regulars of the area.

_I was never sure, but I think it was something my son did. He left town suddenly after and never returned. Now when she passes she won't even turn and wave hello to me. She used to be so kind to me, one of the nicest people I knew too. I think whatever he did to her, I think it broke her in some way. She hasn't seen anyone since and she always walks with that hunched look about her._

Al ponders what kind of terrible act Ms. Caufield's son must have committed to break another person like that, but Dublith's people always seem to unfold with layers of unexplored horrors. He's aware that often times Mrs. Caufield always knows more than she actually says.

When Mrs. Caufield _doesn't _know someone, she makes things up about them. At first Al found it such an odd thing to do, but as time carried on, he thinks he starts to understand.

_There, _Al signs, pointing out a man in work coveralls with a scratchy beard carrying a bouquet of pristine roses across the road. _Who do you think he is?_

_Him? _she asks and Al nods. _I think he works at the sawmill down the road. He forgot his fifteenth anniversary yesterday after coming home tired from a long day at work and his wife is mad at him, but she won't tell him why. Today, while at work, he figured it out and immediately rushed out to buy those flowers for her in apology, hoping to make things up to her._

Al leans in closer, watching the man with his eyes squinted. The story is very plausible. There looks to be a nervous edge to his walk and a little speed in his gait as he rushes home to his wife. There's nothing to suggest otherwise.

There's even a silver wedding band wrapped around his ring finger if Al looks hard enough.

_Okay, now you try. What do you make of the woman in the pink sweater?_ Mrs. Caufield asks him.

The woman can't be much older than Teacher, though Teacher's age is a hard thing for Al to pinpoint, but relatively speaking. Her dark hair falls freely around her shoulder in messy coils. Continuously, she clenches and unclenches her hands in a nervous gesture. There's a red suitcase at her side.

_That girl is waiting for her best friend. She grew up here but moved away when she was only a teenager. Her family moved because their business fell into bankruptcy, but she's finally back, all these years later, and is nervous to reunite with her friend after so long without seeing her._

Less than a minute later, a man comes rushing up to her, one with hair slicked back in the popular style of the day and in a fancy looking suit. He sweeps the woman in pink off her feet and spins her around for several moments before setting her back on the ground and planting heavy kisses across her lips.

_I guess I was wrong then, _Al signs, a bit dejected. Mrs. Caufield is never wrong, but every time Al proposes a theory he always seems to be disproven shortly after. Either there's a touch of magic to her (which is quite possible in Al's opinion), or she's just good at what she does.

It's a curious little game, but after a few rounds of playing it, he thinks he's finally seeing the individual trees for the forest they comprise. This isn't a game about individual stories of the many strangers that come by, this is a game about language.

It's not language like Al's ever thought about it before, but there's a way that Mrs. Caufield views the world which seems so much bigger than anything Al's ever considered. He doesn't know how to explain it to her to ask her to show it to him, he has a feeling it's just something that comes with experience, but it enchants him all the same.

The game is more about seeing what lurks behind the obvious rather than storytelling. People say a lot more about themselves than they express just with their words. There are stories told by people through their appearances, their actions. Stories that are more truthful than the things they speak.

Language isn't always the exact science that people pinpoint it to be. There's something deeper about it, something that goes beyond words or signs or voices.

There's a tiredness in people's hunched spines, an excitement in the crinkles of eyes. There are whispers in the unspoken. What he cannot hear doesn't limit his experience, it just implores him to look deeper and find out things for himself. He has four working senses to rely on, so he needs to employ them to their full capacity.

There's a part of Al that thinks he's already learned this lesson, just never properly digested it. He understands the signals of happiness and pride when Brother pats his head. He understands Winry's assurance in the way she laces her fingers through his when he's scared. Sometimes people speak through touch, and that's a much more powerful language than anything.

Mrs. Caufield sees people for who really are, people beneath their superfluous lies.

That's a skill Al would give anything for.

After nine months of training with Teacher, their time in Dublith comes to a startling halt. She tells them there is nothing more she can teach them so abruptly one afternoon. The rest they will just have to learn on their own.

She buys them train tickets for the next week and Al spends the remainder of those last few days wondering why everything is suddenly happening so fast. He says goodbye to Mrs. Caufield and tells her he'll miss her. He really will. He'll miss everything about Dublith, from Teacher to Sig to Mrs. Caufield to the strangers they observe. He tells her he'll come to visit her soon. He doesn't want to leave her here lonely again.

When they go back to Resembool, there won't be too much left to do. If Teacher thinks that's all she can teach them for now, then they're probably ready to bring Mom back. Al thinks they have the knowledge they need to attempt it.

The time has come.

And just as quick as it came, their time in Dublith is over.

**.oOo.**

When Ed and Al return to Resembool in the beginning of June, Ed notices that the summer here is decidedly colder even though it's only just begun. Maybe that's because Dublith was just so darn hot that anywhere more north feels like an absolute tundra, or maybe it's the feeling that comes with returning home in different skins with stronger bones. So much is different now, and though they left Resembool being more knowledgeable in alchemy than most alchemist, they're even more skilled than before. They could take on the world if they wanted, just Ed and Al and their brains filled with more knowledge than ever before.

Except they aren't aiming for the world, only a mother's gentle embrace.

They take the train by themselves when they go back home. The Curtises see them off at the station. Sig says goodbye first, wrapping both Ed and Al in a gigantic bear hug and lifting them up off the ground which makes Al kick and giggle. Sig signs something to Al in the limited sign language he has picked up since he met them which makes the boy laugh, but Ed is pulled away by Teacher's hand on his shoulder.

He turns to her, and there's a glint in her eyes that he's never seen there before. They're always like deep coal, matte and dusty and hardened in a way that only the pressure of the earth weighing down on one's back can make them. Now they gleam like polished and shined obsidian.

"Teacher?" Ed asks in a voice that comes out weaker than he means for it to be. He winces, expecting her to immediately chide him for his timor, but she doesn't even react.

"Take care, Ed." Her voice sounds like it's coming from a recording of her and not spoken at the moment through her lips and off her tongue. "And don't do anything you'll regret."

_We won't, _Ed thinks in silent response. He has no intention of failing now.

"Good."

The next thing she does is squat down until she and Ed are at eye level, and pulls him into a hug. It's not something Ed ever would have expected of Teacher, in the nine months he's known her it doesn't fit her character, but it isn't unwelcome either.

He hasn't been hugged like this—hugged like a child by a parent—since Mom.

She's always been kinder than she gives herself credit for. Somewhere under that brusque exterior is a maternal instinct and a warmth that seeps through her skin. She isn't warm in kind in the way that Mom was, the way Mom is going to be, but they're not so different after all. As unkind as Teacher might appear to an outside eye, she is very kind at heart. She bought them candy apples when she saw them staring longingly at the cart in town. She let Al keep the teddy bear he found on the shelf of the powdered blue guest room when he'd asked why she had it. She sat in their room from sunrise to sunset the weekend they both got sick like an eagle watching over her hatchlings.

So Ed falls into the embrace. He can feel her arms as she pulls him close and he tucks his face in the crook of her neck the same way he used to when Mom would hold him. It all comes back to him so naturally, and to think he's almost forgotten this.

They pull away as the conductor comes by, yelling about the last call for passengers to board the train.

They grab the handles of their suitcases that they brought with them the day they came to Dublith and board the train. There's an empty booth waiting for them like magic and Al pushes the window open immediately, sticking his head out and waving at Teacher and Sig who stand there below them.

"Don't be a stranger!" Teacher calls out and Al nods, clearly pleased with himself for understanding so flawlessly.

The train begins to move and soon the two of them standing there in the station become only two in a sea of a million little blurs as the train snakes down the tracks headed eastbound.

_We should come back to visit, _Al signs when the station is out of sight. _I think Mom would like them._

Ed nods.

That's right, they aren't going home to the same old lackluster Resembool, the town that doesn't shine like it used to. They're going home to Mom.

It's the most hopeful thought Ed's had in a while, but that doesn't explain the emptiness that persists in his stomach as the train marches on and the distance between him and Dublith grows farther and farther.

**.oOo.**

The first thing that Al notices when he gets back to Resembool is that the 'OCK' has fallen off the _ROCKBELL AUTOMAIL _sign that greets people at the edge of the Rockbells' yard. He wonders how long it's been down, it could have come off yesterday or nine months ago when they first left. Either way, he'll never know, they've been gone for so long and time passes slowly.

However, despite the typical temperament of Resembool, time isn't _completely _stagnant here.

Perhaps that is best seen in Winry, who greets them on the porch in a clumsy hug with Den bouncing at her heels.

Her hair is longer, blonder somehow, and she's definitely grown taller. When they left, Al remembers that green jumpsuit she wears now being just a bit too long around her ankles. Now it looks to be too short.

But height isn't the only thing that's different about Winry, she's grown in other ways too.

Dinner's a chaotic affair. Al does his best to follow Ed and Winry's rambunctious conversation, with their flying hands and waving arms and fast-moving lips. Reading the words of others is hard, really hard, but trying to do it like this is even harder.

It's so much easier when the lighting isn't as dim as it is here in the Rockbells' kitchen and when he's being spoken to directly instead of trying to watch the conversations of others. It's majority guesswork on a good day, but this has taken that aspect of it up several notches.

It doesn't help that they all have their mouths full.

Granny gives him a sympathetic look and he smiles back.

_They're talking about Dublith,_ she signs, trying to clue him into the wild conversation. _And some island you two stayed on, _she adds with a raised eyebrow, just as confused as he is it seems.

They wash their dishes when dinner's over and Granny and Ed both retire back to their rooms, leaving Winry and Al standing in the kitchen shelving porcelain plates.

_How've you been? _Winry asks him with a tap on his shoulder. _Ed won't seem to shut up about Dublith and your teacher and the alchemy you learned there. It seems he enjoyed himself._

He smiles. She's certainly right there, Dublith has left Brother in an extraordinarily good mood and Al thinks it has more to do with how close they are to bringing Mom back than actual Dublith. She's so close now, just on the edge of the world waiting for them to come find her. It will only be a few weeks now and then they'll have her back.

_Dublith was… amazing, but I'm sure Brother already told you all about that. What have you been up to here while stuck in Resembool? _He says it almost like it's a curse, that being in Resembool the past few months has been some kind of prison, but that isn't quite what he means. Now that's he's seen the world beyond the sheep farms and the rolling hills of green, or at least a small part of it, he realizes how limited his world has really been all this time. He's had a taste of the low hanging fruit that is the rest of Amestris and he wants another.

There's a whole other world right outside their backdoor, one he'll probably never know, but one he would like to.

There're other people out there, so many people with so many different stories and he wants to hear them all. Al thinks of Mrs. Caufield and her kittens that she nursed back to health and her veiny, weathered hands that moved as quick as birds.

Stories told through words and voices and text and hands and bodies and actions.

Winry takes him upstairs into her room and sits him down and shows him all the projects she's been working on lately. Granny has been giving her larger and larger responsibilities around the workshop and now she's servicing customers completely by herself with a little help from Granny on some of the detail work.

Pride for her swells in Al's chest like a helium inflated balloon. He and Ed haven't been the only ones learning and growing, Winry has too.

He's glad they still have their easy energy about them. Winry was always so effortless to get along with and with the exclusion of Ed, since Ed is his brother, Al would consider Winry his best friend in the world.

When she's done showing him the pair of legs she's been working on for a man out in East City who came all the way to Resembool to receive _their _automail, she turns to Al and they both just laugh for a moment, so happy to be back in the company of each other. Al didn't notice it before, but only now when Al feels the tension release does it feel like he can finally breathe easy for the first time in nine months. The city air really is something else.

They move over to the bed and Al tells her about what he's learned while in Dublith. He pretty heavily glosses over all the alchemy stuff, not wanting to give away what they're going to do in the coming weeks by accident. He tells her instead about Teacher and Sig and the butcher's shop that they run. He tells her about Mrs. Caufield and little bowls of milk she sets out for the neighborhood cats and the way she's opened up the door to a whole new world with helping him practice reading lips.

_Wait,_ Winry interjects when he gets to that part, _so you mean I don't have to sign to you anymore because you can now read lips? _She seems so genuinely perplexed by the whole idea and Al guesses he would be too if he were someone who knew him who could hear. It must be jarring to speak with someone one way their entire life only to find out that the method is obsolete.

Winry, funnily enough, would be the person best suited to practice out his lip-reading skills best on.

See, the rules of grammar with sign language are different than those of spoken and written Amestrian. Where the spoken word follows the same grammatical patterns that the written word does, sign language has its own grammar rules entirely. That's only formally though, there's also the more informal style (which is easier for most hearing people) where if they're speaking and signing, they just move their hands along with the words in the same grammar as the spoken word. Either way, it's just as easy to understand for Al.

Winry typically follows the grammatical convention of the latter. She has a habit of speaking as she signs, even if it's only Al there to hear her. It isn't something Al takes offense to, though some suspect he would, but rather he finds it endearing. It's such a cute, little quirk.

It's also beneficial to him in some sense of the word. It makes her someone good to practice his lip-reading on when he can, but when he gets lost in it he can follow her hands to guide him back in.

_Don't stop, _he signs to her and explains to her that while he may be on the track to reading lips proficiently, it's still one of the hardest things he's ever had to learn to do and signing is so much easier.

They both fall asleep in her bed that night sometime around 3 a.m. and for a couple hours it's like nothing has changed. Like nothing _will _change.

**.oOo.**

While the ingredients are plenty cheap, not all of them are easy to come by. There's an apothecary who keeps in stock most of what they need, but not all of it. There're still things that they have to special order from him that will take a few weeks to arrive.

He raises an eyebrow when they ask for things like saltpeter or large quantities of lime, but he's so used to them asking for obscure items for their transmutations that he doesn't question it enough to ask them. Not enough to stop them.

Not like they would have told him what they were planning to do anyway.

They tweak and perfect their formula, their circle. They're aiming to do the impossible so it has to be perfect. Not only are their lives on the line here, but now Mom's life is too.

There's been a renewal in the strength of Ed and Al's relationship since they returned home and Ed takes notice of how his brother has grown since before Dublith. It was so subtle at the time, but now it feels glaringly obvious like a blinding lighthouse on the midnight coast.

Since day one they've had to be there for each other more than any other siblings usually have to be. When there's no one else to rely on, they would rely on each other. Ed knows what it means to be there for Al, because Al only had so many people who were willing to be there for him in the first place and now half of them are either dead or have deserted them.

When your circle of people you can communicate is so limited, it strengthens the bonds you _do _have even more tightly like the two sides of rope on either of a knot being pulled tighter and tighter.

Every action since then furthered that feeling even more. Hohenheim abandoning them, Mom dying.

That deep-seated love and protection for each other never dissipated, never waned, but Dublith brought upon a renaissance of such feeling. Perhaps the island did it, Ed having to live with the only voice in his ears being his own, but his brother's tinkering hands always right next to him, talking and working and playing.

They still live tangled in a world of small touches and actions.

If actions speak louder than words, then perhaps the language of the silent is the loudest language of them all.

Al's as strong as he is kind. Not strong in the physical sense—though he _is _strong that way too if training with Teacher for hours a day has anything to say about that—but strong in character. He has a bigger heart than anyone Ed knows. He's always had a big heart, but it seems to shine more powerfully now when things look dark.

It's a kind of strength, a gentle quiet, that people so often mistake for meekness. They think him shy, easy to push around in the storms they don't create, but Ed's pretty sure no one sees the strength in his simplicity, the power in his everlasting patience and benevolence that stands above the rest. Everyone who thinks Ed is the stronger brother just because of his brash attitude and his tendency to rush in head first with no thought or method is wrong. These things are not virtues, not the way Al's gifts are.

Perhaps compassionate is the word for it, though no single word or phrase in any language can sum up his mannerism completely.

And then there's Winry too. She's done a lot of growing since they've been gone. She's so passionate about her automail that she'll babble his ear off about it for hours if he's not careful and lets her. Usually Al is a good substitute for those kinds of situations since he cannot _have_ his ear talked off.

Still, that doesn't mean Ed's not excited for her. He genuinely is and he's so happy she's found her niche. He may not understand her science or her automail, but he sees the joy it brings to her and understands the joy it will bring to others and by God he respects the hell out of it.

Ed wonders sometimes if he's grown too, if he's become a stronger, better person. He doesn't know, he doesn't think he has, but he'll let Mom be the judge of that.

**.oOo.**

The wind bites sharply at Al's cheeks as he climbs up the hill behind Ed and pulls his jacket tighter around his shoulders. August is never this cold, it's always as hot as any summer months, but ever since they returned from Dublith, the Resembool air seems to be filled with a persisting chill. Maybe it's just they've grown accustomed to the southern heat, or perhaps it's something else.

Ed pushes open the iron gate as they enter the cemetery. The black paint is starting to chip, leaving the rusted metal underneath partially exposed. Al wonders what will be done about that, if anything. It seems things around here are decaying faster and faster than ever before.

The cemetery is set up like a maze. Gray headstones spring from the ground like trees and Al is constantly having to watch his steps as to not run into them. That said, if he tries hard enough, Al could probably navigate this place in his sleep. He can find his way back to Mom always.

Mom's polished headstone is cool to the touch. In the five years since she's died, erosion has worn it down significantly. Mosses and lichens take the bottom inches, sinking their shallow roots into the stone and crumbling it to slow pieces. They've almost won the war again the 'TR' of her name, seeming to start from the left and working their way right as any sensible thing would. They seem of damn determined to bring her grave to bits and pieces.

Ed and Al sit in the grass, their shoulders brushing up against the other's as they sit there, eyes tracing the cracks.

There's a bouquet of wilted daisies propped up against the headstone, no doubt the doing of Granny. Most the petals are missing, fallen off the drooping stems and scattered with the wind. To anyone else it would probably be a pitiful sight, but to Al it brings some kind of warmth. It tells him that it's not just him and Brother who miss Mom, but that there are other people out here who love her desperately too.

_This is the last time we'll see Mom like this, _Ed signs, though seeing Mom like this isn't like seeing her at all. He carries on, _by tomorrow evening she'll be back to us and returned to the world of the living._

Al doesn't give anything in response.

_You're not scared, are you? _Ed asks in a way that makes sure Al knows he's not mocking him. Al recognizes that if Ed's asking that so genuinely then there must be fear building up in him too.

Al ducks his head slightly, but looks up at Ed. _No,_ he lies, afraid that if he tells the truth then it will only worsen the anxiety that Al tries to keep unseen.

_Good._

They sit there for a couple more hours saying nothing at all, and Al feels nervousness wearing away at him like acid in his belly. They watch the sun set over the hill, the sky fading from orange to pink to purple, glinting off the shiny stones of the gravemarkers in a pattern like a secret message being read off.

When the sun sinks below the line of the horizon, Ed takes Al's hand and leads him out of the cemetery. Maybe they're too old for such childish things, but something inside Al feels quite small in this moment. It's like he's just a little kid—a _littler _kid—and that his skin has grown much too big for him to wear. Maybe that's what the slight panic that a life-changing event leaves with people, or maybe it's like the sixth sense that Granny claims Den has every time he howls at a storm yet to come.

Ed and Al fall asleep in the living room with their boots still on, not caring about how the mud on their shoes muck up the floors. They have more important things to worry about.

The next morning they skip breakfast and lunch and immediately get to work in the basement study. They don't even need to give any kind of direction to each other, just immediately falling into their known places. Ed remeasures each ingredient for the thousandth time and Al draws the chalk lines that zigzag across the basement floor in a giant array.

There's a sudden draft in the basement, something that worries Al, but Ed promises won't have any impact of their work. Goosebumps prickle up all across Al's arms in the cold like a rash. Something about it feels so very wrong.

Al carries flasks and beakers of material after material to the basin in the center of the circle, stepping lightly through all the intricate lines of the circle in a funny kind of dance.

It's almost midnight by the time they finish with their preparations.

The liquid in the basin seems to bubble up in a golden kind of color that matches Brother's eyes. The dim light of the kerosene lamps that sit on the desk keep the room only visible enough to see what's important, brushing over all the small cracks on the stones of the floor and the walls and illuminating the dust in the air like fireflies.

All there is left to do is add the blood. Their blood from her blood, if they're right—and they're definitely right—then this will be what makes Mom Mom.

Al watches the silver knife that Brother holds. It sparkles brightly as he spins it in his fingers. He goes first, cutting across the tip of his index finger. The red blood buds at the edge of the cut in small drops like dew stuck on the threads of a spider's web.

The drops fall into the basin and mix in with the swirling liquid, their color fading in the gold.

Al goes next and bites at his lip at the sharp pain of the knife through his finger. The cut isn't deep by any means, only enough to draw out the secret ingredient, but it's enough to hurt. When he's done, he places the bloodied knife on one of the back desks by the suits of armor and rejoins Ed at the edge of the massive circle.

There's something sinister about the scene in the same way there's something sinister lurking about the annual harvest bonfires. It's not that the fire or the dancing of the people is particularly scary itself, but rather what lurks out beyond the range of the firelight that petrifies Alphonse so. When he's here in the basement preparing for the biggest transmutation of his life, he's outside of the soft, warm glow of the firelight and he feels like any moment he'll be snatched and devoured by some shadowy monster. Maybe the big suit of armor with the big spike on its head will jump out at him when he's least expecting.

Al kneels beside Ed at the edge of the circle, his back turned towards the three suits of armor his father stacked against the back wall. He and Ed had gone back and forth several times about the tin basin that holds the sloshing liquid that would soon become their mother. They had endlessly discussed about whether the tub was counted as a material in the transmutation, if the body would have the wrong composition and this entire attempt would be in vain. Still, they couldn't just pour everything on the ground, there had to be something to hold the reactants in.

It is a risk, but then again all of this already is.

That only makes the pit in Al's stomach cave in deeper.

Al turns to look over at his brother at the little tap on his shoulder.

_You ready? _The yellowed lighting from the two lamps is barely bright enough for Al to see Ed's hands clearly.

_As I'll ever be, _Al signs with a sigh.

This is it. Make it or break it time.

Ed nods and brings his hands up to clap in front of his chest as he sits back on his haunches and Al follows suit.

A single deep breath, the touch of his palms together, and then Al slams his hands to the ground.

For a moment nothing seems to happen. Al looks up from where he was staring at the chalk lines and brings his eyes up over to meet Ed's. Al's greeted with the same look of confusion in Ed that he knows must be reflected in his own face.

But it only seems to last for a second.

Al can feel the ground beneath where he kneels beginning to shake now. It rattles his bones and sends vibrations up his spine in an out of body tremble. Every hair stands up straight up on his skin.

Ed shoots him a cocky smile, _this is it, _reads in his eyes, but Al doesn't see it the same way.

Flashes of both hot and cold shoot through his limbs. It's not a feeling he knows how to describe, but it terrifies him and suddenly he wants this all to stop.

_It will be worth it! It will be worth it! _the back of his mind cries out. _You're getting Mom back so stop acting like a baby because it _will_ be worth it!_

And then the culling begins.

Crackling energy swirls around them like a storm and the contents of the basin that are supposed to be Mom bubble up like a geyser ready to burst. There's a dark color to the room, a slightly purplish hue, and Al turns to Ed but he can't make out his face in the chaos.

There's a tingle in his toes, a twitch in his fingertips, a burning in his lungs.

It doesn't seem like the kind of scene that should play out silently, but it does. It does because Al never had any choice for it not to.

**_ And then it all goes wrong_**


	3. Chapter 3

**we can give you a new body, a new voice.**

**you'll miss your parents, and the sun,**

**but you could sing.**

**–a softer world by e home and j comeau**

* * *

There's something hungry about the darkness. Something so jarringly greedy about it. It's eating up all the light, consuming all things joyous and happy, licking up the shadows that pool on the floor.

It takes a long time for Alphonse to come back to it. Even longer for him to realize that the darkness all around him isn't just his eyes closed, but rather that he is lying somewhere in a pitch-black room. He wouldn't have been able to see his own hand had he lifted it in front of his face. He doesn't try it though, he's already sure it isn't worth the effort.

There's something on the edge of his consciousness that tells him to run, tells him to hide. There's a deep-set panic somewhere within him clawing its way to the front of his mind, desperate to be heard.

_Where is he? Where is this pitch-black place? How did he get here?_

The connection almost clicks. _Almost._But before Alphonse can put all the scattered puzzle pieces of his mind back together and remember the transmutation, remember the pain like nothing else, something happens. Something even stranger than grotesque corpses with organs spilling out of broken ribs like candy from a piñata. Even stranger than coming back to life after feeling yourself die.

Alphonse almost doesn't recognize it at first. It's so small, so weak, and he doesn't have the experience to recognize it, doesn't have the vocabulary to put words to it.

But he does anyway. Because it's his brother.

Alphonse doesn't have the words to describe it. How does one begin to find the language to describe _language?_ He knows all the correct vocabulary: shrill, melodic, muffled; earsplitting, squeaky, muted. The dozens of sound-related words there are, but he can't make them correctly relate to this.

What Al hears is a sound, a sound he's never heard before. It's not a sound he's never heard before not because this particular sound is something new, Al's never heard it before because he's never been able to hear _anything_ at all.

But not having the experience or the words to describe a sound doesn't deter Al from knowing what it is. Some things are innate, they don't need an explanation or need to be learned to be recognized. Al can hear the low moaning without ever having heard anything else in his life and know it's a sound of deep, guttural pain.

It emanates low and from the back of the throat. It is made involuntarily, pouring out from behind clenched teeth and scrunched up faces.

Al has never heard his brother, oh god he's never heard his brother, but he immediately senses that the deep moaning pain comes from him. Their connection runs deep, deeper than it naturally should in a world so scientifically dependent, but it does. Al swears he can feel the noise rattle through him.

_Brother! Brother! _Al's mind whirls, but he stays inert. The shock of being able to hear and the still missing puzzle pieces of what has just transpired that has left his brother making such a sound leaves him frozen. He doesn't want to move an inch.

Ed grumbles out something that Al assumes must be words and it hurts him. This is the first time he's ever heard his brother and the first sounds he'll ever know of him are those that are pained and anguished.

Something about that breaks the immobility of spell that is cast over him and Al tries to sit up and move towards the direction that he assumes that the sound must be coming from (which is a very disorienting thought) but something loud sounds.

This sound is different, and Al doesn't like it very much. It's the kind of sounds he thinks would be described as ear-splitting or jarring for his physically wants to cringe upon hearing it. It happens again when he moves his arm to his side to push up. Again with the other arm as he plants that one on the ground too.

He doesn't remember anyone ever telling him that people make these god-awful scraping sounds every time they moved. Maybe people have just grown so used to it that it isn't something they even have to think about. Maybe it's just unique to him.

Perhaps it is nothing more than delusion. There's no way in any version of this reality that he is able to hear, the noises themselves don't even make sense. Maybe this is just some wild fantasy conjured up by his spinning brain to mask the confusion.

But that doesn't explain how real and unfamiliar it feels, how earthshattering everything has become.

Al forces himself onto his knees and moves to the pained moaning. He moves slowly and detached from reality in a way that's very much like swimming through syrup. His head isn't thinking straight and he feels as if he's enveloped in the mask of a dream, the kind that allows the distortion of reality to be a plausible, feasible thing. The kind of aversion to reality that allows deaf children to believe they are hearing or for the absence of feeling in his knees as they move past the stone floor of the basement to be overlooked.

Perhaps one cannot think straight when they don't have a brain to think with.

As Al moves, he comes closer and closer into the light that floods in from the door at the top of the basement stairs like the glow of a wicked heaven.

The sight isn't pretty. Al wasn't expecting it to be, but he also wasn't expecting it to be _quite _this bad either. He wasn't expecting the blood that flows freely across the floor like a massacre has just taken place or the way he doesn't feel the wetness of it as he moves closer and closer.

Brother lying perfectly in the light so that Al can see all of him in the artificial, yellowed glow.

It takes him a moment to realize that the right arm that Brother so fervently grasps at is gone. His clothes and surroundings and open wound are so drenched in red that it takes him a while. After he sees that, Al's eyes frantically scan the rest of him in a panicked array only to catch on the left leg which is nowhere to be seen.

He feels like he's going to be sick. It reminds him of the slabs of meat that Sig would have in the shop. The red of the freshly cut cattle and the blood and the cleanly cut bone like it's been driven straight through with a chainsaw. It's a sort of messy perfection.

Al watches as Ed turns his head over to him and peers up at him. There's a look in his eyes, something of a restrained fear. It's the same kind of look he gets when he's trying so hard not to cry, and Al doesn't understand. He thought perhaps Ed would find at least some semblance of comfort in knowing now that he isn't alone, that he is in the presence of his brother so he doesn't have to fear anymore, but the reaction is the complete opposite.

Ed throws his head to the side with another howl of pain and Al snaps out of it. He doesn't have time to worry about himself and why he creaks or why his brother looks so scared of him now—scared for him. There are better things that need to be done, things that mean getting Ed out of here and over to Granny who will know what to do with him. They couldn't have gotten luckier than living next to an automail surgeon, someone who specializes in limbs that aren't there.

His head is swimming so badly in the moment that Al doesn't even bother to take into account the unfeeling of his arms that he scoops up Brother, he doesn't take into account their metallic sheen or the giant, gloved fingers. All his focus is trained on Ed.

Al's thoughts don't linger on what he can't remember. He must be present in the here and now and worry about what happened later. Taking action is the most crucial thing right now.

That's the reason Al doesn't question it when he picks Edward up and doesn't feel the weight of his precious cargo, why he doesn't wonder why his vantage point is from so much higher now than it has been on any other day.

He doesn't dwell on the fact that his memory swims like a fish in murky waters.

Each clunking step up the stairs towards the light lets out a symphony of sound of scrapes and bangs.

When he reaches the top of the stairs, Al thrusts the door open with his foot with more force than means to, causing it to slam back into the wall so fast that it probably caused a sizable dent in the drywall. Not quite caring at the moment—though that would have been something he would have cared quite a lot about had the circumstances been any different—Al steps out from the basement and into the kitchen.

Or he tries to anyway, he means to, but there's a large bang that comes from somewhere near his head and his vision swims. Al leans forward so he won't go falling backward, stumbling into the light of the kitchen with a gasp.

He doesn't know how to explain the way his vision suddenly changes on him. It's like he's seeing the world normally for one moment only for it to blink out and then move his vantage point down somewhere much lower and where the lower half of his vision is obscured by a metal bridle.

There's the sound of something falling backward down the stairs. It hits the stairs with the same clunking sound he makes when he walks.

It hits once, twice, three times, and then it sits silent.

Al stands there wondering what that was for a moment, wondering if he should see for himself or if he should return to his task of getting Brother to Granny's a fast as possible.

The world now is so noisy. He wants to crawl back into the comforts of his endless silence and away from the endless torment of such a loud world.

Curiosity gets the best of him and he turns back to the basement and stands in the doorway looking down the steps.

The strip of light that floods into the basement should be wider than it was earlier now that the door is completely open, but it isn't. For the most part it is completely obscured by a gigantic humanoid standing in front of it like a monster from under his bed.

From his weird eye level, Al follows the light from the top step to the bottom across the basement floor.

There's a lot down there to process, so Al does the most simplistic thing he can think of and starts from the outside and works his way in.

One the ground is a giant circle of chalk. _Alchemy, _he recognizes instantly, and interprets the runes that are visible in the light. Symbols for creation, symbols for life. There are symbols for water and salt and a whole variety of thing and Al almost has a grasp on what the circle is trying to say, but it's complex and he wouldn't be able to grasp the full meaning with certainty without seeing the entirety of it.

Slowly, with hesitant eyes, Al follows the light to the center of the circle where the monster sleeps.

When he sees it, its black hair in a tangled heap around its face and its unnaturally twisted limbs, memory floods back into Al like a dam has been broken.

_Mom, the transmutation, Ed, the chalk, all the studying and textbooks._

_Blood and silver knives and limbs._

_Hands. Millions and millions of little black hands tearing him to pieces and ignoring his struggle against their gasp._

Al is standing here right now. He's standing at the top steps of the basement looking down at their mother's second corpse where he felt himself die.

_It's impossible._

Another bought of pained moans surges from Ed and Al looks down and that's when he sees it. It isn't his arms that hold Ed. Not his pink flesh and soft skin.

It's arms of metal that carries the curled up, crying burden.

He realizes he can't feel Ed in his arms either. Logically he can see that he's there, he can see the boy wrapped up in gargantuan vambraces, but he can't feel gravity pulling on his little body.

And then Al looks back down the stairs to the mess of his mother and sees the silver helmet of one of the suits of armor rolled up against it and he understands.

He died, yes, but somehow he was brought back and placed in this suit of armor.

It was his head—his _helmet_—that rolled down the stairs just a moment ago.

A sense of panic ensures.

Al hesitates for a moment, unsure what to do, but ends up running back down into the basement and grabbing the helmet and placing it back where it should go.

He doesn't have a head for it to perch on, instead it floats like magic where a head _would _be.

There isn't time to think it all through, isn't time to stop and ponder all the questions wrapped so tightly around him like a blindfold over his eyes. No time to question how he's still alive, how Ed's limbs came to be in such a state. No time to question how he can suddenly hear at all.

As Al makes his way through the house towards the door more quickly now, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and almost drops Ed as he gasps.

He's all silver and red, a man of metal painted in blood. He's tall now, so very tall, and he's composed completely of spikes and unforgiving angles. Al blanches at the sight of his new self.

And when he cannot take it anymore, he turns away and flings open the front door to the lashing rain.

Al runs.

**.oOo.**

The rain outside is pounding and Al is afraid he will lose his footing in the dirt, causing him and Brother both to stumble to the ground and go avalanching down the hill. He's grateful that doesn't happen though. If he were to drop Ed now then that would probably be the end of him.

Al keeps running. It doesn't rain often in Resembool, but when it does the storms are always like heavy monsoons. Mom used to call them the summer purges.

_Mom. Oh God what have we done?_

He wants to cry out some apology too. He wants to turn his face—helmet?—to the sky and cry out to Mom and ask for her forgiveness. He wants to, but doesn't. He doesn't deserve it.

But he doesn't have time to focus on that now. Not Mom and not his new state of being. Ed is his priority. He has to help Brother.

**.oOo.**

The next few hours pass in a blur as Al sits under a window and watches as the sun rises. He doesn't think he's ever seen the sunrise here in Resembool. He's seen it in Dublith, on Yock Island, but never at home.

Winry cried when he first came to the door. Al isn't sure if that's because of what he must have looked like or because of the blood or because of the state of Ed. Maybe it's a combination of all three.

The reason for it doesn't really matter though. The way her eyes grew in horror and the way she flinched when he stepped forward felt to Al like a sharp stab and twist of a knife.

Al has a pretty good rough estimate on what he _must _look like now. He saw the stand in the basement where the spiked armor no longer stood. He sees his metal arms, his metal legs laid out in front of him on the blanket he rests on. He knows what he must be, how fearsome he must look.

To Winry and Granny's credit, though, they didn't question it when he came to the door clutching onto Ed. Or maybe they did, Al can't be sure because he doesn't know how to listen and to understand yet. When Granny took Ed from his arms, Al brought he hands up in front of him.

_Please, _he signed. _Please, please, please._

They must have understood who he was then if they hadn't grasped it before, Al thinks. Who else would have come to their door in the middle of the night with Ed, signing his sorrows?

The world of sounds is a restless one. There's isn't even a moment of silent peace like he has known all his life. There's a lot of ruckus from the surgical suite that he knows must be where Winry and Granny are doing what they can to save Ed.

But they aren't the only ones who make sounds. The whole world is filled to the brim with a cacophony of noise. The water heater beside him chugs and churns, the rain hits the back porch outside the window in an endless pattern.

In any other situation, under any less life pressing circumstances, Al knows he would be full of awe of this whole new world. He's never has any kind of deep desire to hear. People always assume he does, they pity him for it, they muse how sad it must be to never hear music or a mother's loving voice.

Still, despite everyone's beliefs, he's never had that desire. He finds it pointless to yearn for the impossible things he'll never have. What he _does _have is good enough anyway. It could be so much worse after all.

He thinks maybe _this, _the unfeeling shell of a body and the blood stained skin of silver, may be that even worse that he was always afraid of. He never can seem to win.

Right now he want to curl up into a tiny ball and fall asleep, but he doesn't know if he can. He's going to have to process what has just happened in the basement sooner or later, but he can't right now. He doesn't want to think about Mom's rotting corpse or Brother's missing limbs or his own fate. He just wants some peace of mind and a bit of silence which he thinks he'll never get back.

The noise can be so overwhelming.

Of everything about the situation that doesn't make sense, it is his newfound ability to hear that comes at the most shocking and unrealistic to Alphonse. It isn't that his brother is down on two limb nor is it that their transmutation failed that grapples his mind and sends his thoughts spiraling. It isn't even that he is a bodiless creature of some bizarre existence. Rather, it is the fact that he can suddenly hear that sends his mind whirling and buzzing.

How could it have happened? What switch was finally flipped in his mind that allowed this to be? Nothing like this on record has happened before, nothing he's ever heard of. Once someone is deaf, they stay deaf. It isn't something that can be reversed.

So how was his?

Al tries his best to think back to all the details he knows of his deafness, everything he remembers ever being told. He wishes he had listened more to his mother about it when she was still alive, had found out every minute detail she knew about it so he could have taken it into account. He's sure Granny must know some of the details, she did act as their family doctor and midwife for so long, but he doesn't want to bother her with that now. She has bigger and grander things (Edward) to deal with than his existential crisis.

So Al picks and pulls apart every fact and detail he _does_ know. In the end he ends up settling on the fact that he knows three bits of information with absolute certainty.

He knows that he is totally, completely deaf. There are different kinds of deafness, that some people can hear certain things if they're loud enough or at certain pitches and tones, but his deafness is complete. He has been surrounded in total and utter silence.

He also knows that he's been this way since birth. There was never a time in his life where he could hear at all. He came out of the womb not knowing the sound of his mother's voice.

When he was very little he remembers Mom taking him to specialists, doctors out in East City. It wasn't that she was trying to _cure_him of his deafness, not like people claimed she was, but rather just trying to gather what information she could. She was so careful, so caring in all that she did. This was her child and she did all that she was able to to be there for him.

The final fact he remembers is that his deafness stems from a physical problem in his ears, probably something that happened while still in the womb. He doesn't remember which part of his ear (Mom would know, if only she were here right now like she should be), but he knows that it is centralized to the ears only. It isn't an issue of the mind, but an issue of the body that left him silenced for all nine years of his life so far.

So perhaps that is it. Perhaps it is because his body is now gone that he can suddenly hear. If he no longer has a body with ears that don't work, then why should he be deaf? If it were his ears holding him back all this time, and now they are gone, then there is no reason for him to be deaf.

It's the only answer he can think of that makes any kind sense to him. The only one that seems somehow more plausible than _magic_.

Al sighs, drawing his knees in closer. It's all too confusing to make any sense of. He wishes for some kind of guidance, but where could he begin to find anything like that? No one has ever lived through an even somewhat similar situation.

As Al's looking up at the clock and figuring out how many hours have gone by since he came here, Winry walks into the room.

She's changed out of the pink, sunflower dress she was wearing when he came to the door and into a pair of blue scrubs. The cuffs of the pants are rolled up on her ankles and pinned short and the shirt looks more like a dress on her than a top. They don't make scrubs for child surgeons.

She looks as tired as he feels. There're deep bags under her eyes and her whole face is a splotchy red either from exhaustion or from crying or both.

_He's stable,_ she signs curtly without speaking. _Granny and I are going to bed._

Al nods and it feels like a weight has just been taken off his unfeeling shoulders. Brother's stable. He's going to be alright.

_Not alright,_ the back of his mind presses, _but not dead either._

_You should come to bed too. You should probably take off of that suit of armor anyway._

Al shakes his head no. _I couldn't even if I wanted to, _he doesn't say. She hasn't yet realized he's empty.

Winry's the kind of girl who would normally put up a fight against that. A girl who would do what she could, even if he didn't like it, so long as she thought she was doing the right thing for him. It's a true testament to how exhausted she must really be right now, though, for she doesn't say anything to his decline. She just nods and turns away on her heels and leaves.

Al hunkers down into a ball, bringing his scrunching knees up to his chest, and rests his helmet on his folded-up arms. He can't seem to shut his eyes and return to darkness no matter how hard he tries. He's cursed with eternal sight and hearing and it's oh so overwhelming.

He tries to pull himself into a sense of rest, but he can't, so he sits there like a miserable statue listening to the birds sing with the beginning of a new day.

**.oOo.**

Winry is the first to rise that afternoon, or at least Al assumes she is. She's the first to come down the stairs.

Al expects her to turn to the right and come talk to him, but instead she turns to other way in the direction of the surgical suite, clearly going to check on Ed. Al is normally so quiet and now his body is so loud and yet he is forgotten.

_Right, she's just going to check on Brother. _He's got to stop being so damn selfish, thinking everything is about him.

He never fell asleep like he was supposed to. He tried, he really did, but it never came. The emotional exhaustion just sat on him like a cloak and never once dissipated.

It's almost evening now. Granny and Winry slept most of the day away since they stayed up all night taking care of Ed and patching him back up the best they could.

Winry's returning now back out from where Ed sleeps. Al hears something that must be foot falls in the hallway grow louder and louder as she approaches.

_Al?_ She signs, speaking as she does.

Al says nothing, just keeping his face turned at her. He almost asked for a mirror when he first got here last night and Winry laid out the blanket and directed him to sit on it. He ended up not asking though, he didn't think he would be able to bear what he saw in its reflection.

_Alphonse? _She says and signs again and again, stepping even closer in that stilted manner that tells him she's afraid. _Alphonse, what's wrong?_ He watches her lips move, the way her mouth opens and shuts, the way her teeth touch her lip on the second syllable. He tosses the word back and forth in his head, rolling it around over and over and over again.

So that's what his name sounds like.

His arm creaks as he slowly begins to move it. Al brings a giant, clumsy finger up to his chest and meets her eyes.

"Al-phonse," he mimics her in an unpracticed, stiff voice and Winry lets put a gasp.

"You can hear?" she asks incredulously, shock painted so surreally across her face.

Al is only able to follow what she is saying because he can read her lips and know, not because the words that spill from her mouth mean anything to him. He can't put sounds and words together to create meaning, he doesn't have the exposure.

At her exasperation, he nods.

**.oOo.**

And so they heal. Ed heals physically, not mentally though. His stumps get better, there's a lot of changing of bandages and technical work from Winry and Granny, and Al has started spending the night beside his brother's bedside so he can keep a good eye on the progress made. It is hard in the beginning, _harder, _he should say since just hard connotes that it isn't still hard now. At least now Brother is capable of staying conscious for a few hours at a time, he's able to keep down food, but he isn't the same. He isn't the same brother Al remembers from before everything went so wrong. There's something so far off about him now, like he's a simulacrum of the person he once was, a cheaply made automaton.

Winry ends up becoming the highlight of Al's day. She's always been one of his best friends in the world, but they've now begun to form a relation that runs deeper than that. Winry is his mentor, his guide, his teacher.

During the afternoons, when Winry isn't taking care of Ed or working on one of her automail projects, she works with Al.

Al couldn't be more grateful for her. He couldn't have asked for a better friend.

Winry is the one who helps Al relearn to be gentle—or as gentle as he can be, all things considered. She doesn't get mad when he breaks things by accident, when he hurts her by touching a little too hard and he sees the tears of pain well up in her eyes but never spill over. Instead, she gives him a smile and tells him it's all going to be okay. He hates himself so much for it, but when she signs that it's okay her face looks so genuine that he _almost_ believes her.

She forces him to draw pictures on pieces of scrap paper with crayons and pencils. Pictures of what, it doesn't matter, she just wants him to practice holding things again without breaking them. She wants to push the limits of his dexterity and fine motor skills. He can't be delicate, he can't be gentle, but she makes him be anyway.

He hasn't drawn for fun in so long. Since he was little and he discovered alchemy for himself, he's been drawing nothing but circles and arrays and runes. He doesn't trust himself to draw those things now, not after the wicked crop sewed of his and Brother's last transmutation.

So he draws silly things. Turtles stacked on turtles, a tiger breathing fire, a mime with a megaphone. He tries drawing Ed once too, Ed before he was butchered to hell, but the drawing is so bad that Al doesn't know whether he should attribute its horrendousness to his lack of drawing skills or his new, unfeeling hands.

He breaks a lot of pencils at first. He can't feel the pressure he holds them with, he isn't sure how soft or how hard he clutches them in his hands and so they often end up as splintered pieces on the floor. It makes Al more frustrated than he's ever been. He's never been angry at himself for the things he can't do that most _normal_ people can, but now it bothers him to no end.

He storms out of the house so angry with himself more than once, drawing paper and broken pencil shards strewn across the room.

Al always comes back a few hours later, profusely apologizing, not only for breaking things like the crayons and pencils, but for having such a bad attitude about it. Winry's never mad at him for it, though. She's always nods and smiles, signing to him _it's okay, next time we'll try harder._

He thinks perhaps she should be though. She _should_ be enraged by his stupidity, his senseless body that doesn't work anymore.

At least that way she could confirm what he's already begun to discover about himself to be true.

Signing is hard too, really hard. Before the transmutation, when he still had a fully functioning body to work with, he never had to think when he signed. All the motions were displayed so fluidly, each falling into the next like a river rushing by. They weren't complex, weren't difficult. They were the very expression of his being, his hands moved as seamlessly as the stars.

But that was before. Now his hands are too big, too stiff to really do any of that. It becomes easier over time; the leather becomes worn and it is easier to get his thoughts of action to translate into actual motion, but it takes a lot of will to get his hands to follow his mind's lead. It's never been hard to speak this way but now it almost silences him completely.

Winry helps him with all of that too though, the angel she is. She helps him re-go through the motions. She teaches him to speak.

They work harder, and things do get better. His drawings get better, his handwriting more legible. Winry starts making up stories out of the pictures that they draw together, and they always leave Al giggling when she's done telling her tales.

That's another new interesting thing too. He didn't know what laughter sounded like before and it sounds more precious, more fragile than he ever could have dreamed it would have. He now knows what pure joy captured in a single sound is exactly like.

Perhaps the most important thing Winry teaches him about is the spoken word.

Words are _hard. Listening _is hard.

See, Al can read lips will proficiency, so if Winry speaks to him without signing while she does, he can understand her. He can hear the words she says to him, but he can only understand her based on the movement of her lips alone. He can't put soundwaves to letters, and so that's what she teaches him to do.

They'll stay up under the lamp of her room and she'll read story books to him aloud. Never textbooks about alchemy, but the same books he read when he was five. There's a book about a princess who sleeps endlessly in a castle of vines, about a prince who looks more like a monster than a man, a siren who gives up her song.

Winry makes Al pay close attention to not only following her lips as she speaks, but to listen to the sounds she makes. She makes him repeat the words she speaks, and sometimes she'll sit with him in the pitch black of her bedroom at night so that he can't see her lip and then she'll say phrases and makes him repeat them to her liking.

After a few weeks of practice, she makes him try it out for himself. She makes him read the books to _her _so that she can listen to him practice and she helps him with the long words he gets stuck on. He stumbles over the texts, a lot of time having to ask Winry for help on them because while he gets the meaning of them, he forgets the pronunciation.

Amestrian is a complex language, Al never realized how many different sounds each letter can make. Some nights it feels like they sit there forever as Al sounds out each letter in a word, trying to string together a pronunciation for a word he learned to read in his head when he was three.

While he can understand what the words are saying like it's an inborn skill, he struggles a lot with sounding them out and associating their meanings with their sounds.

Al knows that when he speaks he sounds funny. It isn't only the metallic echo that accompanies everything he says, but it's also his voice itself. He isn't used to making any of these sounds, so his words come out laced with the heavy accent of a non-native speaker.

Winry tells him he sounds like a foreigner, but she also tells him she finds it endearing so he doesn't mind too much.

She makes him practice over and over and over until he can voice his thoughts on his own, so he can speak without using his hands or texts as his crutch. Slowly, over time through hours and hours of work, they both start to see an improvement in him. It makes Winry so proud, she cheers for him each step of the way and celebrates each milestone like it's the Summer Solstice. It makes Al happy to see her so proud of what he's accomplished.

Al knows he isn't getting the full speaking experience though. Speaking requires precise movements of certain muscles, opening and closing of the jaw and pressing of the tongue, but he doesn't have any of that. He'll never be able to taste the words of the letters in his mouth.

They tell Granny early on. Of course, it isn't a secret, but it still sounds like something weird to confess to someone. He's afraid Granny won't believe him at first, but he's a ghost in the shell of an empty suit of armor, so really anything is possible at this point.

When he tells, though he tells her though the signing of his leather gauntlets because he told her before all his lesson with Winry, she simply purses her lips and walks away. Al doesn't know what to make of that, but she doesn't resent it outright so he thinks that must be some sort of win.

The only person Al hasn't told is Ed. Winry tells him he should, that Ed has a right to know, and while Al agrees with that, he can't bring himself to actually do it. He thinks that maybe telling Ed will do more harm than good. He suggests once that Winry be the one to tell Ed if she does so deeply believe he should know, but she won't.

"It's not my secret to tell," she says. "It can only be you."

And maybe that's the worst of it. No matter how much he relies on Winry or Granny or the lessons on speaking, in the end everything that matters comes down to him and Ed. Nothing else is important except for that, but their unbreakable bond has been shattered and it carves into Al like broken glass against fleshy skin he doesn't have.

Because when it comes down to it, no matter how okay the listening and the reading makes him feel, the truth of it all is that he's just a scared little boy in the body of a man. He's scared about his future, scared about his present, he's scared about himself, of himself, but most of all he's scared for his brother. Al can pretend like he's healing, that there's a scab forming on the wound on his invisible heart, but that isn't true. He hasn't healed, he's more scared than ever.

The worst of it is at nighttime. At night, Al gets to sit by himself and listen to nothing at all. It wouldn't bother him normally, he's spent his entire life greeted by silence, but now that he's had a taste of sound, the silence leaves him feeling so empty. Or perhaps the reason he feels empty is because he _is _empty.

Still, there are things worse than silence. Anyone who argues against such a notion is naive.

Al spends every night sitting the dark beside his brother's bedside. He doesn't get up and walk around the house, he's tried that before and the groans and creaks of his giant body kept everyone up, so he stopped. He doesn't go sit outside in the dark either. There's a childish part of him, one that's still very innocent and pure, that's afraid of being alone in the dark. At least beside Brother he can pretend he is accompanied in the loneliness.

Some nights, most nights, the silence is punctuated by the voice of Brother. It's the sound of him screaming out in his sleep, whispering Al's name with a pained ferocity, yelling out in a broken voice. Al's spent so long trying to get himself used to Winry's and Granny's voices, spent the days understanding their own speaking quirks and patterns and picking out the differences between their respective voices, but Al hasn't be able to get used to Ed's. Ed doesn't speak or sign to him during the day, he doesn't speak to anyone. He may nod or shake his head to Winry or Granny on occasion when they ask him if he wants food or if he's in pain like they're running down a detached medical checklist, but he never speaks.

And when he does, when he opens his mouth and lets the beast free, it's only a night when he's scared, and so the only times Al has ever heard his brother has been his voice when he's scared and screaming. He wishes he could know what he sounds like normally.

Ed's new behavior scares Al. His glassy eyes are dead. He's like a made up little baby doll whose glass eyes are frozen in one position, melded into its porcelain body and decked out in frills.

At least the daytime is tolerable, enjoyable even at times, but Al cannot begin to bear the nighttime. He knows this is his new reality, that his future is filled with darkness and sound, but that doesn't make it any better. This shouldn't be a bitter spoonful of medicine that he should just have to hold his nose and swallow, no one deserves to spend the rest of their life like this.

Tonight, Al sits on the side of Ed's bed that allows him to see out the window and he looks up at the stars. He's done this a million and one times when he was actually a person of flesh and bone who couldn't sleep (and not because they didn't have a body that couldn't sleep at all.) Tonight he looks at the stars as they twinkle, but he doesn't let his thoughts swim back to the comfort of Mom. He doesn't allow himself to mull over his usual thought that she's just a distant star. If he allows himself to think of her, he who is so tainted and broken and undeserving, then he will dishonor who she was, who she _is. _She deserved a better son, one who wouldn't participate in the act of killing her for a second time.

God, he made her suffer again and only because he was too foolish to stop and think for a moment that maybe human transmutation just might be a bad idea after all. He was too greedy to consider anything but what he wanted.

So tonight he looks at the stars and sees them for what they are. They're just burning balls of gas, epicenters of hydrogen fusion millions of light years away. They're lonely entities, creatures that must live their entire lives burning themselves out with no one to witness them. Al's never felt closer to the lonely little stars.

**.oOo.**

Al starts beginning to think that this must be their new reality. Him, the empty armor and his brother the mute, but there comes a day when all of that changes. A day when someone is able to get through Ed's outer shell and actually slap some sense into him.

The Lieutenant Colonel comes chasing a rumor about two thirty-year-old alchemists, The Brothers Elric, like they were a travelling show or something. He must be plenty surprised to come across what he finds. Al almost pities him for finding something so depressing instead of these glorified alchemic geniuses.

He tells them that he came searching for them and their god-like alchemy, but he couldn't have predicted anything like this.

The Lieutenant Colonel's visit, while Al doesn't trust him or his Lieutenant, is the first time Al has to put what he learned with Winry over the past few weeks to the test. He's gotten used to Winry and Granny's speech, but now it's time to see how limited that knowledge is.

He's surprised by the variance of voices that he hears. There's Winry's voice, it's soft and smooth and has a cadence to it like a song. Granny's voice is flat and her pitch doesn't much change. Ed's voice, on the occasions when Al hears him scream out into the night, is broken and coarse. It's like a skipping, scratchy record.

The Lieutenant Colonel's voice is deeper than the other voices he's used to, something Al knows is typical of adult males, but it still surprises him. He lacks that certain twang in his voice that Granny and Winry have. The Lieutenant beside him has a voice that is quiet and stern, but Al has a good feeling she can be loud when she wants to be. She seems like the kind of woman that could direct all of Hell's army if she ever found the need.

Their visit breaks the repetition Al has grown used to.

It's here again that Al is reminded just how handy spoken language is. He can still follow a conversation without being up too close and whoever is speaking doesn't have to be facing him so he can read their hands or lips for him to understand them. This is a language that could thrive in darkness.

Granny reluctantly serves tea to the Lieutenant Colonel, who introduces himself as Roy Mustang and his companion as Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye. Tension brews like the tea leaves on the kettle in the living room and the Lieutenant eventually gets up and goes out into the entrance hall with Winry who looks like she's going to pounce on Mustang and rip him to pieces any minute now.

When they're gone, Mustang requests to see Edward. He says nothing about seeing Alphonse Elric, the younger brother, and Granny mentions nothing of it. Al hasn't moved since the Lieutenant Colonel got here, he's stayed sedimentary standing up against the wall like the armor used to when it was only a decoration in the basement, and Granny doesn't bother to introduce anyone except for herself.

Al has a sinking feeling the man probably thinks that Alphonse Elric is dead.

And is he really? He's definitely not _living_, not like this.

Granny wheels Ed out into the living room and it really is quite the pathetic image. Ed's in one of those oversized hospital gowns, the kind that tries it's best to hide the stumps of his shoulder and leg, but fails to do so. His hair is greasy, uncombed and uncut, falling into his eyes, covering his face in shadow.

Al never realized how unkempt Ed looked until now. He knows Ed's been wasting away in that hospital bed like a corpse in the grave over the past few weeks, but this dirty image still shocks Al. He wants to cry for his brother, mourn the still living.

The Lieutenant Colonel tries to converse peacefully with Ed, the silent puppet, but Al sees from his position how quickly the Lieutenant Colonel comes to realize there is no point in that. Ed doesn't talk back, he doesn't argue. He takes it all with sticky amber eyes that are simultaneously looking everywhere and nowhere.

Al sometimes wonders if more of Ed was taken than just his arm and leg.

His sanity perhaps.

But Al knows that Ed's unusual behavior bothers the Lieutenant Colonel. He is a man with status and he isn't used to being ignored, especially not by some shrimpy kid who's fucked up in the worst way possible.

So where his voice starts out calm but biting, Mustang then raises it, hoping his shouts will better go through to Ed. When it's evident that does nothing to aid his case, the Lieutenant Colonel hoists Ed up by his shirt collar and yells in his face, so angry that he would attempt the forbidden human transmutation that tore him and his brother apart.

_This _is the spark that sets the fire off in Al. He's remained silent and complacent for far too long. He's just stood there on the sidelines and done nothing his entire life, but now is the time for him to break free of that. This isn't right. This man, this _bastard, _has no right to treat his brother that way!

Suddenly Al comes to life and he is all the rage and fury that his façade shows him to be. He will be the monster others see him as. If he has to be the self-fulfilled prophecy then so be it. He will be scary and mean, he doesn't care, but he refuses just to stand by and do nothing as this man yells at Ed for things that were _his _fault.

Al launches over to where Mustang stands with his brother's leg dangling in the air and places a heavy hand on Mustang's shoulder, not bothering to be gentle. He'll be harsh on purpose now. Rage is all the fuel he needs.

His heavy touch makes the Lieutenant Colonel pull away with a wince, dropping Ed back down into his wheelchair.

"Put my brother down," Al declares in the clearest yet sternest voice he can muster. Putting the proper emotions behind his words ius still something he struggles with, but he has this one down just fine.

Al sees Ed sitting in the wheelchair from his periphery, his eyes so wide with shock from what Al just did that Al thinks he must be dreaming. Finally, _finally, _something has gotten through to his brother.

A moment later the blonde Lieutenant bursts in, gun drawn and pointed at Al.

"Hey!" cries Granny. "You put that gun away or so help me God! Hasn't anyone ever taught you military idiots not to point a gun at a child?"

"_A child?"_ the woman mumbles in disbelief and her gun falters.

"Yes, a child. This, _Lieutenant, _is Alphonse Elric."

"_Alphonse Elric?"_ she repeats, looking faintly sick. Al almost feels bad for her until he remembers she's still pointing a loaded gun right at him.

Not that it would do much damage if she shot him.

"What happened?" the Lieutenant Colonel demands. "I want to know everything."

And so Al pulls up a chair to the table, though no one serves him tea, and tells them everything.

**.oOo.**

Lieutenant Colonel Mustang leaves a couple of hours later, thanking Pinako for her hospitality and promising he'll be back.

Ed didn't say anything the entire time, and after the shock that showed on his face after Al's little outburst subsided, he went back to his blank stare, not even saying anything when the Colonel suggested he become a State Alchemist. That was an offer that piqued Al's interest though. With that kind of information perhaps he could restore Ed's body and maybe even his own. They could never fix what they broke, but they could mend themselves the best they could.

Mustang must have seen something in Ed. He must have seen something more in those lackluster eyes and unmoving features because he seemed to leave with great certainty that Ed wouldn't hesitate to follow.

When they leave it's pretty late into the evening, and so Al pushes Ed's wheelchair back to his bedroom and helps him under the covers.

Al listens to the whirring on the fan above his head now. Sometimes Granny turns it up so high he's afraid that it's going to fall off the ceiling and down onto Ed who sleeps in the bed beneath it. It must be a warm October. The month's only just begun, but Al does not ever remember needing the fan this late in the year. He wonders just how hot it is.

That's one of the little things that Al will miss that he never spent the time to think about how much he loved before. There are so many things he forgot to be grateful for when he had them. Little things he didn't think could ever be taken away. Little things that aren't so little anymore.

Granny comes in sometime around midnight, checking on Ed and mumbling something about forgetting one thing or another. The medical jargon is confusing, but she's only in there for about five minutes before leaving and then once more Ed and Al are left in the dark alone.

It's so awkward and Al hates it. He knows Ed is awake right now. He's lying on that bed with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling and they don't speak. It reminds Al too heavily of coming back to consciousness in the basement and finding Ed mutilated in the pitch black.

"Why didn't you tell me?" comes a quiet, raspy whisper and Al jerks up from his hunched position to his full sitting height.

He looks around the room for the source of the voice though deep down he knows. He knows logically it's only Ed who could have asked, but Ed's never spoken to him. They haven't ever breathed a word to each other.

"What?" Al's still a bit confused at processing what Ed said and he isn't used to his brother's voice. There's a rumble to it that comes from its unuse and gives Al a harder time comprehending what he means.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Ed repeats, slower this time like he can read Al's mind. Six weeks apart yet right next to each other and their almost telepathic connection never severed.

Al wonders if he can taste the irony of those words on his tongue like a bitter lemon. There's no accusation in Ed's voice as far as Al can tell, but again, that's still something he struggles greatly with.

His voice is still wobbly and unpracticed, but Al turns to face his brother. "I–I couldn't. I didn't know how," and that's probably the truest thing Al has ever said or signed in his life. He _didn't_ know how. He didn't know how to say _anything._

Still, while waiting for Ed's reply Al's armor tenses like a child who knows they're about to be scolded.

Neither of them say anything for a long time and Al starts to think that perhaps Ed has fallen back asleep. Maybe he doesn't care.

Or maybe he's angry about the truth. He's angry that in the _equivalent exchange _of their human transmutation when Ed lost everything, Al gained a voice.

Finally, Ed flips over in his bed and turns to face where Al sits below the window.

"You have a nice voice, Al. It's good to hear."

For the first time since the transmutation, Al sits there awake that night feeling not quite so empty.


	4. Chapter 4

**«Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux. »**

–**Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry**

* * *

There comes a time when every cover must be cut. A time when the red, velvet material of the curtain must be drawn so that the show can go on. A moment when the veil that shrouds the heavens must be ripped apart by the hands of God himself because eternal power can only be contained for so long.

For Edward, the Lieutenant Colonel's visit paired with the release of Al's secret does exactly that, it calls away the shroud that's laid over him like a shield and releases the film from his solid, gold eyes.

He spent six weeks lying dormant like a volcano ready to erupt. Six weeks in a bed with no mind, with no voice. He's told there was a "yes' here, a 'no' there, only when the situation called for it, but that was all his mind on autopilot. Truth is, he hardly remembers those six weeks for the reality of them. He doesn't remember the days' play-by-play, but he remembers the sensations of pain.

He remembers being sewn up like the time he tore the head from Winry's rag doll when they were five. He's only a figurine that needs his stuffing replaced and to be sewn back together with a single, silver thread. Granny and Winry try to keep all the stuffing together and make the seams as neat as possible, but they don't make replacement parts for human marionettes, so he'll have to settle for this uneven body of missing limbs with stitches like patchwork across his appendages.

Al enters the room carrying a tray laden with a teacup and a plate of something else—he holds it too high for Ed to see.

"Winry baked cookies and I thought you might like some," Al says, his voice cheery. He sets the tray on Ed's lap and takes his place on the edge of Ed's bed, his new favorite spot for the past three weeks. Ever since the Lieutenant Colonel came and visited, Al's been spending as much time as he can sitting there with Ed, which is new. Ed may not remember the hazy period too well, but he remembers enough to know Al hardly came near him then.

"Thanks." He takes a bite of one of the cookies, chocolate chip. "Oh, they're good!"

"Yeah?"

Ed immediately ducks his head, looking down at his plate and suddenly feeling very full. He shouldn't have said anything. He sets the remainder of the cookie down with the others on the plate.

"Why'd you stop?" Al asks, his voice never wavering. Ed knows he must be playing the fool, that he must know why Ed stopped, but of course he won't say it outright.

"It's nothing."

"Brother," Al draws with a sigh. "We've talked about this."

They _have_ talked about this. Extensively. It was a back and forth, an over and over kind of conversation that only went in roundabout ways. It was pointless to talk about such things, really. Ed knows in the end he will always feel guilty and Al will always pressure him not to. There isn't any changing each other's minds.

Ed picks back up the cookie, hoping to appease his little brother, and shoves the remainder into his mouth.

"Now that's just gross."

Ed smiles a toothy grin at him, his mouth still full of cookie crumbs and Al makes a disgusted noise.

There are things he hasn't told Al, things he _can't_ tell him. He can't tell Al about the big silver gate and the gatekeeper who waits outside it. He can't tell Al about the knowledge that was poured into his brain with a blinding, white-hot pain like magma as he withered on the endless white floor, his leg unraveling in from of him as his toll.

He does, however, tell Al about the price he paid for his soul. Ed once told Al everything there was to say, but now it's all kept on a need to know basis. Al is only informed about that particular piece of the story because he has to understand the sigil drawn in blood that is the bane of his entire existence. Without it, he is nothing.

And Ed knows Al understands pieces are missing from this story, but his little brother never pries, and Ed is forever grateful. From what he can gather, Al doesn't remember the Truth.

The only thing that didn't work out to the way anyone could have foreseen is Al's newfound ability to hear. It makes sense to Ed, without his body it's only understandable that Al can hear. He isn't tethered to the capabilities and limitations of his flesh and blood body, he's tied to those that belong to the armor. So where his ear didn't work as they should have before, he doesn't have ears to worry about anymore and so he isn't held back by what they can and cannot do.

If there is anything good to come out of this disaster, then it must be that. Hearing has never been something Al has chased after, Al's always been a smart kid and knows when to give up the gun. He knows not to lust after the impossible for it will leave you impossibly empty when you can never grasp what you never can hold. Still, it can't hurt now. It's not an equal pay off, Ed knows that even though Al very noticeably tries not to talk about his new existence.

Ed looks up at Al and sees that he is satisfied with Ed's efforts at scarfing down the cookie. He may not have a face or a normal-looking body now, but Ed's spent so many years reading Al based off physical expression and body language alone that this hardly hinders his ability to read Al like a book.

Speaking of books—

Ed gets Al's attention by gesturing over to a pile of books stacked up on his nightstand. They're not textbooks, that's clear from their fabric bound spines of pastel colors and their easy to read fonts and fun titles. They're storybooks.

It became evident to Ed that while he might have spent six weeks wasting away and giving in to the darker parts of his mind, Al has by no means just sat still and done nothing. He's been working quite hard in fact.

Al doesn't talk much about that either though. In fact, he hardly talks about himself if he can help it. He'll do all in his power to fill up the space with questions about anything and everything but himself. Ed doesn't know if it's nervousness or embarrassment or something else, but it leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Al's always been a quiet kid, and not just in the literal sense. He's quiet in personality too. Soft where Ed is harsh and thoughtful where Ed is brash. They're each other's perfect complement. He doesn't ask for much and as a result he doesn't get as much as he rightfully deserves, but Al's never acted resentful over such. There's a hidden power in quiet, one much greater than anything loud.

It's from Winry that Ed learns about all that Al's accomplished over such a short period. She tells him one afternoon when Al is running errands for Granny in the square, something he has recently been doing. She sits on his bedside in the divot that Al's armored body has created and tells him about the reading and the drawings and the words. There's no lack of pride in her voice and Ed thanks her for being there for his brother when he was too weak and cowardly to do so himself, for being such a good teacher to him.

Their practice doesn't just end now that Ed has reentered the world of the living. He can still hear them together in the living room in the afternoons going through books and working around the house, but he tries his best not to listen _too _hard. There was one morning that Al must have knocked over a whole row of dishes that he and Winry were washing, for the sound of them crashing the floor was loud enough to wake the dead. Ed listened as Al repeated over and over again his apologies, his voice trembling close to sobbing, but not quite. It hurt Ed to hear that, to hear Al apologizing, for _not being good enough _he said in his own words. He doesn't want to hear Al say that about himself ever again, but he thinks that by bringing it up to him, Ed would only just humiliate Al further.

He knows Al fixed the dishes shortly after, alchemized them back together like they had never fallen at all, but even though they were fixed, that doesn't take away from the fact that they were knocked over the first time at all.

So in the afternoon when Winry trails off to join Granny in the workshop, Ed has Al read to him. Read what, it doesn't matter, but it's almost always storybooks. They both seem to be avoiding anything to do with alchemy.

Ed's forgotten how much he used to love storybooks.

He listens to Al as he reads them, listens to the rises and falls of his voice, the inflections of his words. There's something unnatural about the echoes that linger after each of his sentences, but Ed tries his best to ignore it. There are still a lot of long words that Al has problems with pronouncing and when he gets to them he'll lean over so that Ed can see the text and have Ed read them out for him so he can mime their sounds.

There's also a practiced measure that comes with his voice, one that isn't there in most speakers. Ed knows it comes from never speaking Amestrian before, not verbally anyway, but it still saddens Ed and that sadness only confuses him. He's never been sad over Al's deafness, it's always just been a natural fact of life, but something about the little accent of an unpracticed speaker that Al carries with him dampens Ed's spirits.

Ed lets Al chose today's book off the stack on the bedside table. He chooses a volume with a green spine and an illustration of a boy and a fox on the cover.

As Al begins to read, Ed closes his eyes and rests back on his propped-up pillows and begins to listen.

**.oOo.**

There is a fresh humiliation in being polished clean like a silver tea kettle. Alphonse is sure Winry realizes this too and so she hardly says a word as she works on washing away the stains and tarnishes across his surface.

There must be an untold history to this armor, a secret locked between its metal plates and joints. This is a body that's seen war, that's seen death. It's ancient, that's for sure, and not for the first time since Al's soul has been transported inside it, he wonders what stories it stores. There're adventures here he'll never unlock, but there will also be adventures of his own.

Al knew his armor was loud and he's been bothered by the constant sound of it, but he's never thought about how others must perceive his ruckus. When Winry pulled him aside an hour ago offering to help oil his joints, Al mentally cringed at the thought that his presence was bothering others, but Winry assured him she hadn't been bothered by it. Still, that didn't keep him from flinching at every noise until Winry pulled out her tool kit and sat down to oil his joints and polish his surface.

She teaches him how to do it himself, though she refuses to let him do it this time since she wants to take extra care to do it properly the first time.

It hurts Al to think that he'll have to do this again, that he'll be in this state long enough to warrant another cleaning.

He told Winry about the blood seal then too. He can't risk that she'll accidentally wash it away.

"I'm going to the square to pick up some parts we ordered at the post office. You want to come with?" Winry asks while scrubbing, breaking the silence.

"Sure, hopefully the laundry will be dry by then." They decided to wash the loincloth too, just for good measure. There was dried blood crusted on the outside edge of the cloth which Al hadn't noticed at first.

The day is a sunny and bright one, there're a few clouds in the sky, but they're the puffy, big white ones that only serve to make the day look even brighter. They leave Granny and Ed behind at the house, promising to be back soon with all the automail goodies from the post office.

At first Winry suggest they take the wagon so that they can carry back everything that they pick up, but Al assures her he can hold it all. Nothing is too heavy for him, not when he cannot feel the weight of it in his arms.

The parts that they're going to get are mostly for Brother. The morning after the Lieutenant Colonel came by, the morning after Ed spoke to Al for the first time in six weeks and showed some sign of life, he demanded an automail arm and leg of Granny. The two of them had then proceeded to go off into some kind of debate with a speed too rapid-fire for Al to follow. It seemed Ed must have come out on top though, for before Granny left the room she told him he better enjoy his last day without it, that they were going to begin preparing him for port installation the next morning.

Al watches as Winry shivers now, pulling her sweater tighter around her shoulders. Al never would have guessed it's cold, the day looks as warm as any old summer day he remembers in his memory of days of heat and sun, but then again it's mid-way through October and he's forgotten how to feel.

Memory is a fleeting thing. There are some things everyone thinks they will never forget, things they won't forget because how could they? When you can feel, no matter who you are, you're never going to forget those feelings of happiness like helium in the lungs, sickness like a river of dust. Who could forget the feeling of the sun in the summertime and the cold like tundra in the winter?

But Al has forgotten, he's forgotten it all. He remembers it in a literary sense, he knows the words associated with each and every feeling, but he has forgotten it in a tangible sense. He reads little storybooks to Ed and Winry, storybooks that aren't deep or meaningful at all, just books so he can practice and he envies the characters that live in the little, fantasy worlds. He envies them because no matter how bad they have it, no matter what sticky situation they must learn to overcome, at least they have it better than him. At least they can feel.

Envy is like an illness. It creeps up on you when you least expect it and plagues you like the springtime flu. It's weird because no matter how much Al resents those feeling of jealousy, no matter how hard he tries to get rid of them, he can't, and they make him feel him feel even worse.

Envy is always coupled with a heavy side dose of guilt.

Al doesn't want to feel these things; he doesn't want to feel jealous of the other things that people have because his situation could be so much worse. If it weren't for Brother and his sacrifice, he would be dead. His only alternative to this half-life is death, so he _has _to be grateful.

_Right?_

The post office rises in front of them on the edge of town. Al can see the homes and the booths of the people who live and work in town instead of on the outskirts of civilization like he and Winry and Brother and Granny do.

There're secrets to be kept in town. Al never found town to be a place where he had to be any less himself, though he had a feeling most thought he did, but now he feels more out of place here than ever before. When he goes to town now it's like he's wearing someone else's skin.

That's why, as much as he's hesitant to do so, leaving Resembool will be easy. At least out there where no one knows him he can be himself again (or at least as much of himself that he has left).

The bell chimes as they push open the front door of the post office and Al ducks so his helmet won't come off. That would be a disaster to explain.

"Ah Miss Rockbell," the postmaster greets, looking up from the book he reads behind the counter. "You were just the person I was expecting this morning. And you brought your friend…" and his voice trails off.

"Castor," Al supplies, his voice fumbled in the lie.

It's easier to bear things this way, to detach his sense of self from the bewildered stares and the gaping mouths. It's easier to explain too. No one would ever believe that Alphonse Elric is now some seven-and-a-half-foot tall giant who trails behind Winry like a lost puppy. Not to mention one who can hear. Everybody remembers him as the meek, deaf boy. It's easier to lie than to just explain it away, so Al's taken on a new identity for now and it's been working. People don't ask many questions of a metal giant who could strike them down with a single move.

The normally chatty postmaster doesn't say much as Winry signs off on the parcels and Al gathers them up in his arms. Here he can feel the full weight of his existence.

Hearing should change things for Al, but it doesn't. Perhaps it should give his entire little world another layer of depth, but it doesn't because now that he can hear, so much more is missing. He cannot feel, he cannot eat or sleep or smell. He cannot even cry. He fears that he cannot be _loved _in such a form either.

And maybe he deserves that. He was so useless that he could do nothing as his brother's leg was torn away from him and he had to give up his arm just to keep Al alive. Maybe he should have just died that night. _It's his fault that Ed is suffering._

But still, the things he cannot hear are there as they would be regardless if he were deaf or not. You don't need eyes or ears or arms or legs to know the pain, the guilt that accompanies suffering. Hearing cannot change a thing because those who suffer the most are those who refuse to make a sound and cry out for help at all. What is most important in life is that which is quiet.

That, Al knows for certain.

Because what's really important, what really matters in the end, are all the things we can feel, not the things we can hear.

**.oOo.**

Ed writhes again in his bed, kicking his right foot up against the covers and choking back a scream. He smacks the top of his head against the wooden headboard with a knock and for a moment sees stars like they're looking down from the sky, wondering if they should save him or leave him anguished and tortured.

He's burning. Ed is burning, he can feel it. Like all sinners who are taken down to Hell he too is among them, being smothered in the devil's flames and watching as his skin bubbles up like acid and drips away.

The cheap serenity has melted away, if serenity is even what he can call it. Those days when his mind was cleared of its endless fog and he learned of Alphonse's ability to hear weren't joyful per se, they were still filled with guilt and pain and hate, but they were better. Hope still lingered there, it still tucked him in bed at night and made him say his prayers.

The white toothy grin of that _thing_ flashes again inside his mind, refusing to let him go from its clutches.

He knows Al didn't see it, couldn't have seen it. Al isn't calloused from the sight of it, burdened from a pain as white hot as its presence.

Al didn't see the Gate, didn't see the world.

He wasn't split apart by two great, white hands and had all the world's knowledge poured inside of him like boiling magma and sewn up again.

Ed is grateful Al isn't weighed down by this, not weighed down by the heaviness of the world and the Truth, especially when he is already pulled down so significantly by everything else he is dealing with. Ed is sorry though, sorry for what he did and what he is becoming. He always wanted to be better, do better. He wanted to give Al the world, a better and softer world, give him a mother they lost far too early. Instead he robbed him of all the little pleasures he had left. Ed has stripped him baby brother of everything worthwhile and for that he is endlessly sorry.

Unfortunately, sorry is just a word. Just a line of text, a movement of the lips, the motion of a hand in front of a chest. No matter what he does, no matter what lengths he goes to or what sacrifices he is willing to make, nothing will make up for what he did to his little brother. Nothing.

He has been damned to this life of raging regret burning inside of him.

The pain flares up again and Ed chokes back either a sob or a scream, he isn't sure which one.

The pain of automail is bad, almost as bad as the pain he felt as Truth took his limbs.

The pain of everything that comes after is torturous.

Granny and Winry have given him what pain killers they have, but they aren't enough for Ed and they can't give him anymore. He just has to lie in bed and feel it all. And maybe he deserves it.

Still, even if he does, he wasn't expecting the fierce burning of limbs that aren't there. He doesn't have a right arm, a left leg, but he swears somehow, he can still feel the both of them and they feel like they have been set alight. They burn, burn so brightly, and he just wants them gone.

Ed feels the heat travel from his fingertips through his arm, from his toenails to his knee. His limbs burn like all hellfire and yet they aren't even there. Granny had warned him about the imaginary pain, _phantom limbs_ she had called them, and he had brushed the idea away like dust. He wasn't so out of his mind as to be delusional and caught up in a pain that wasn't even real.

He can feel it now, feel the burning where the automail will go tomorrow when they connect the metal leeches into their ports which were installed yesterday.

Ed closes his eyes hard, trying to think of anything beside his current situation, but all he can see in his mind eye's is the smug, white face of the Truth. It's featureless figure, its all-too-self-righteous, toothy grin.

It had given him all the world's knowledge to hold and to play with, to roll around like a pearl between his fingers. It gave him the very secret Ed needed to know how to bring his little brother's soul back from the brink and attach it to the suit of armor so he would not be lost forever and leave Ed in a world alone.

Truth gave him everything he never wanted at such a dangerous price.

Ed doesn't regret the sacrifice of his arm for his brother. In those few moments after the dust had settled and Ed had realized his brother was really gone, he had screamed out to the world, begging Truth to take any part of him that it pleased. He would have given up so much more than an arm had Truth asked for anymore. His heart, his life, his head, his sanity, he would have given it all to give Al even the barest of a second chance.

Because as much as he was scared of that white being in the void, scared of the pain, he was above all else terrified of being left in a world alone. A father who abandoned him, a mother cold in the grave, and a brother taken from him because of his idiotic mistakes.

He doesn't regret saving his brother, but he regrets the situation that got them there in the first place.

Trying to forget all that he saw that night, the Truth of their existence, is something Edward knows he'll never really be able to do, but he's trying his best.

He has to fix things. He can't go on living this way and he knows somewhere quiet Al must feel the same, even if his experience right now is very different than Ed's.

They have to restore what they lost. Otherwise they can never come home.

**.oOo.**

Ed and Al talk. They do a lot of talking and planning, it feels eerily familiar to the way things were before. There's an ominous tone to it, one that screams that things are going to go wrong because they have before, but they have no way of knowing now.

They work with the door open this time. There are no secrets to be kept in the Rockbell home, not when it was secrets that devastated them in the first place.

While Al cannot deny that he does find _some _pleasure in some of the newfound perks of his body, he still wants to get his original body back. He wants to help Ed get his back too despite how little Ed seems to care for his own limbs. Now that he has gotten his automail attached, Al can see how much Ed is hurting. Ed always does his best to try and keep such things hidden, but Al can see the truth as clear as day because when it comes to reading Ed, Al is quite the expert.

So Al allows Ed time to lick his wounds in private just as he did for his own. They're hiding away, knowing the other is suffering but never being able to do anything about it.

With his new automail, Ed begins to start to heal some of the wounds on his heart from what Al can tell. They both have new bodies they need to learn to navigate, so they do it side by side.

They run through the green hills and spar by the lake and draw circles in the sand with their metal fingers like clockwork.

They never do get too close to the white cottage on the hill, the one like a haunted grave that holds a secret inside.

They study from textbooks too. They spend some of the savings Mom left for them on ordering what books they can find and give the rest to Granny to pay for the automail. Al knows what they give her isn't nearly enough to cover the cost, but when Ed exclaims he'll send her his first paychecks as a State Alchemist until he's paid her back in full, she only turns away and tell him what he's given he is enough. She doesn't want anything to do will the military's money anyway.

Slowly, over the progress of a year, Ed gets better and better with his automail until it moves just as fluidly as his two flesh limbs. If someone saw him move and didn't know he had automail, they would think they were just the same as normal arms and legs. They would have no clue.

But Al can't hide himself in that way. He can't cover up in gloves and long sleeves and boots and pants and pretend to be anyone other than himself. His hindrance isn't one that can be hidden, his sin is out on full display.

The seasons fade into one another like a blurring watercolor painting. Autumn turns to winter, winter to spring and spring into summer until by the time they're fully prepared to leave for the capital, a full year has passed and it's October again.

They grow in funny ways in that time. Al almost forgets what living in a world of utter silence once felt like. He forgets hot and cold and the smell of Mom's stew and the taste of it altogether. They're gone, his memories, but he's hoping one day he'll be able to relearn them like he relearned how to move.

He longs to go back and sleep in a bed more than anything. On the occasions he does find the world completely still and silent, it's always at night when he's alone and there's nothing left to do. A silence that feels empty and poisoned, a silence he would give anything to escape.

What is becoming of him? Why has he learned to fear the only world he ever knew?

They'll be leaving soon and Winry is bitter about it. Al knows her intentions are in the right place, that she knows just as well as he does what endless horrors lurk outside their pocket called home, but he can't sit idle for much longer. It's a risk he's going to have to take, venturing out and finding answers for himself.

Because maybe one day, if he learns how to be good enough, he can know peace once more.

**.oOo.**

On the early morning of October third, when the sun still has yet to rise, Edward and Alphonse burn their house down.

It wasn't something preplanned, in fact, they only just came up with the idea for it a couple of hours before.

Al sits restlessly by the window, wringing out his hands again and again. In the morning the train will come and they'll board it, hoping to meet with the Lieutenant Colonel in Central City where Ed will take his State Alchemist examination and promptly be certified.

"You should probably get some sleep before the train comes. I don't think you're going to want to sleep on the train."

"There's no way I'm going to fall asleep now."

Al doesn't think he would be able to fall asleep now either, even if he were capable of it. There's too much excitement for tomorrow.

They fall back into a comfortable silence, sitting the floor and the bed and simply waiting. At sunrise they'll leave for the train station and not return until they're whole again.

"I think we should burn our house down," Ed says, catching Al off guard. Of course, Al thinks that kind of statement would catch anyone off guard just due to the sheer absurdity of it.

"You want to burn our house down?" Al repeats back. Maybe he just didn't hear Ed right the first time. It's happened far too many times before.

Ed nods in the dark and there's no denying it now.

"I think," Ed starts, "that there's going to come a time when we're out there on the road, and if we don't find a way immediately, then I think there's going to come a time when we'll grow weary and want to come home."

Al doesn't say that he already wants to go home. He knows he never truly can. Home was with Mom while he still had a body and all of that is now gone.

Ed continues. "I think by burning down our house we're forcing ourselves to never give up. We can't stop on our quest and come home when there's no home to return to. I think we should do it as a symbol of our resolve."

Al thinks on that for a moment. If they end up wanting to return home because they find nothing on their quest then the quest is probably fruitless. He doesn't think having the house still around will derail them from their mission. They haven't been back in their house in over a year, he doesn't think they'll be reentering it anytime soon.

If they burn the house down, absurd as that idea is, it wouldn't do anything. They wouldn't miss it, they wouldn't mourn it, so it won't be a huge loss. If Ed thinks it will help though, then there's no reason to oppose it. It's just sitting there, vacant.

_Burning it down is a commitment, a symbol of their resolve._

Al throws up a shrug. "I don't see why not."

As they set the first light to the fuel-soaked boards of the house, Winry and Granny rush outside after them.

"Boys!" Granny calls out, her short legs carrying her as fast as they can, "what in hell's name are you two doing?"

Al looks back at her. She doesn't look angry like he's expecting her to, she just looks perplexed and ever so slightly sad.

"We're burning our house down," Al says, stepping between the two parties and trying to play mediator before a fight before Granny and Ed over the matter even begins. It doesn't matter what Granny says now though, the fire has been lit and the house burns there, the embers catching and eating away at the walls.

Granny takes none of that. "Clearly. But why?"

"We're leaving, we don't need it anymore."

Granny shakes her head. "One of these days you boys are going to regret this."

"Maybe," says Ed, looking up at the house and considering it for a moment, "but that's a problem we'll just have to deal with after we've gotten our bodies back. Right, Al?"

Al looks between Granny and Brother. "Right."

She purses her lips, a habit of hers, and shakes her head. She knows just as well as Al does that the deed is done, there's no arguing about it now.

The group of four takes a few steps back from the house as the fire grows. It's a strange sight.

If you had asked Al a little over a year ago what he knew about fires, he could have listed those things off easily and in a neat little list.

Fires range from yellow to orange to red. Sometimes they're even blue. Fires are a gas, they burn and they emit light. Fires are hot, they hurt to touch.

As Al stands here now, looking up at the inferno before them, that perception begins to change.

Once, when Al was searching, rooting through Mom and Dad's room when he was eight looking for more textbooks, he came across a book on psychology. He read it through, bored and not in the mood for any more alchemy. He thought maybe its contents would be helpful to what they knew, that it might just give him some kind of insight into the human condition and the importance of life.

There are lots of things he remembers from that psychology book, things that come back to him in the dead of night when he's the only one awake. Things about senses, things about the importance of touch and comfort and how it shapes a life. There was little in the book on sleep, but he tries to recall what little there was. There were things about how sensory deprivation for too long can lead to insanity which only leads Al to question his own.

But unrelated to all that, he remembers the section on cognitive psychology and the powers of the human mind. There was a theory, only a theory, called schema theory that states that all human knowledge is organized into units called schemata. When you think of something, anything, all the traits and properties of that object is pulled from the schemata that houses them all.

A schemata for cat holds all the traits he knows to be true of the feline creatures. Soft and cute and furry and gray or black or white or orange. Meowing and scratching and playing. Long tails and pointed ears.

Al thinks, standing here in front of the fire, that his schemata have been changing lately. They don't hold the same key words that they used to.

Before now Al never knew that a fire crackled and popped. No one had ever told him that fires roared. Even now he hears the cedar beams of the house snap into pieces, splintering and falling to the ground with a thud. How was he ever supposed to guess that fires were anything but silent?

The whole scene is laid out for him in high definition.

The only thing that is missing, the piece that has been removed entirely from his fire schemata, is the ghost of the flame's heat on his skin.

**.oOo.**

Fire rages, smoke billowing up from the house in pillars like a tornado. All of it is like some kind of unholy christening, the devil's own baptism.

They've sinned and they're paying for it now. Instead of being reborn in holy water, they're being reforged in the flames that spill out of the depths of Hell. This is no symbol of their resolve, it's a monument to all their sins.

Both brothers stand there and watch the fire for as long as they can until the new day begins to break and they set out into the rising sun, planning never to return until they can come back whole.

* * *

**Translation: **"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."


	5. Chapter 5

The next four years begin to come faster and faster in a whirlwind of whiplash and spinning wind. They start out slow, determination driving it the same way it drove them when they were trying to bring Mom back. Determination is the fuel in the furnace, but it can only burn for so long before the wood begins to give and the flames collapse. It can't sustain them for years on end. The first few months of their quest, however, start out slow and creeping.

The first time Al comes to Central City, he is overwhelmed by all the bustling colors and city folk and fast-paced noise. And to think he thought _Dublith _was big. There's so much to see, so much to do.

Al draws in a lot of stares and reactions, but he's grown used to them by this point. There isn't anything he can do now to stop them, so he just has to pretend like he doesn't notice them and move on. He's gotten pretty good at not taking them personally. He thinks he would probably stare too if he saw a metal giant walking down the street, clanking along a head above the rest of the crowd.

The Lieutenant Colonel, who seems to have been promoted in the year since they saw him storm into the Rockbell household full of fury, has been promoted up a rank. He books them a hotel room not too far from the military headquarters where Ed will soon take the State Alchemist exam and get his certification (fingers crossed). The hotel manager stares at them (or Al mostly) for a full minute before he bothers greeting them. This immediately sets off Ed and puts him in a bad mood for the rest of the day, grumbling to himself about the _unhelpful staff _and the _intolerance of these small-minded bastards._

Al has to remind him to grab his coat as they leave to go meet up with the Colonel, Ed too busy ranting about the stupidity of these _city folk._

When they'd talked to the Colonel on the phone before they booked their ticket out here, he had assured them he hadn't told anyone about their situation. He didn't tell anyone about the human transmutation or anything else they had done. He even assured Al that he hadn't told anyone that he was deaf before he was put into this body. After the call, Al had sat beside Brother's bed as Ed snored and wondered why people knowing that bothered him so much. It wasn't something he resented or hated about himself, but still, he didn't feel like other telling people.

So out of all the people in Central, it was only the Colonel and his trustworthy lieutenant (trustworthy according to Mustang anyway) who know the secrets they hold onto.

The Colonel had also told Al that he couldn't take the State Alchemist exam, only Ed. There was a physical examination component to it that Al simply couldn't get out of and so he would have to forfeit.

Al sits in the lounge of the hall while Ed takes his exam. He expects it to take hours for them to assess Ed, but his brother is out of there in no time.

He's so cocky, all cheeky grins and blowing golden hair. He's the kind of boy who could tell you he stole a piece of the moon and you would have to believe him.

Brother's changed since everything happened. Not only in his demeanor, but in his appearance as well. His hair has grown out, it's long now, almost to his shoulder blades and he wears it in a neat little braid. His face has matured, the baby cheeks not quite so chubby and his eyes harder and more focused.

He's come into his own sense of style too, much to Al and Winry's protests. He wears slick, black leather pants and a matching jacket and tank top set, the former lined in a flashy silver trim. He's invested in a pair of white linen gloves and some black boots with at least an inch-high red platform across the bottom.

And then there's the coat, there's nothing more flashy and iconic than that bright, red coat. Al's never going to have to worry about searching for Ed in a crowd ever again when he's constantly wearing that thing. It makes him stand out like a beacon.

For the exam Ed leaves the coat and gloves with Al in the lounge, wanting his hands to be fully exposed to the examiners. When he claps he wants the entire room to see there are no transmutation circles anywhere in sight.

He must have passed because a week after Ed takes the exam, he is called back to the Colonel's office to pick up his pocket watch and certification.

"Fullmetal," Ed shows Al, pointing to where the codename is printed on the certificate, "isn't that cool?"

"It's gaudy, that's what it is," Al replies, picking up the pocket watch for himself off the Colonel's desk. It doesn't seem like much, just a watch with the state's crest, but this is the key to unlocking the door to a whole new world of alchemical knowledge. This is the key to getting their bodies back.

"Well I think it sounds badass."

Al nods. They're one step closer.

The Lieutenant enters the office, carrying a stack of papers and depositing them on the Colonel's desk.

"Edward, Alphonse," she greets them. "Do you have a moment, Ed? I need you to fill out a few forms now that you'll be working under the Colonel."

"Well I was hoping that I could get out of here actually and that Al and I could—"

"They'll only take a couple of minutes, I promise."

"Fine."

Ed grabs a pen from off the Colonel's desk and follows Lieutenant Hawkeye out of the office, leaving Al and the Colonel alone together in the empty office. At the awkward silence, they both immediately busy themselves, Al with straightening his loincloth and the Colonel with fixing himself a mug of coffee.

"And how are you finding Central, Alphonse?" the Colonel asks, his back turned to Al as he leans over his coffee mug, stirring it with a spoon.

"It's alright, really busy."

The Colonel chuckles. "Definitely busy."

They fall back into silence until Al can't stand it anymore.

"Colonel?"

"Hmm?"

"I just wanted to thank you, for allowing Ed to take the exam. And—" he tries to add, not knowing how to word exactly what he's grateful for. It's a hard thing to describe. "And for keeping what we did a secret."

The Colonel hums in response and Al thinks that maybe he gets what he's trying to say. It's not just about for keeping the transmutation a secret, but for not telling everyone about Al and his missing body and magic ears. He doesn't want to have to go around constantly thinking about that doozy any more than he already has to.

It isn't much longer before Ed bursts back in, telling Al it's time to go. Al waves goodbye to the Colonel and thanks the Lieutenant for putting up with his brother—much to Ed's outrage—and follows his brother out of headquarters and onto the street.

There's a park across the street and they walk idly through it for some time, chatting excitedly about how great it is that Ed's gotten his certification and they can finally begin to research ways to get their bodies back when they're interrupted by the growl of Ed's stomach. Ed blushes slightly at the sound but pulls his coat tighter around himself and pretends he didn't hear it.

"It's lunchtime, Ed, you should probably get something to eat."

"It is," says Ed, not turning his head away from watching the swans swim across the pond, "but I'm not hungry right now."

"Yes you are. I heard your stomach growl just a moment ago."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Well I think we should go somewhere nice for lunch. You know, to celebrate."

Finally Ed turns away from the lake. "We don't have to, Al. I can just eat something when I get back to the hotel."

"Brother," Al says, placing a giant hand on Ed's shoulder and then immediately retracting it less than a moment later. "You don't have to deny your own needs just because of me."

"Yeah, but I always feel bad when—"

"No, Ed. You don't get to feel bad about something that was both our faults. You eating or sleeping or _whatever _in front of me isn't going to hurt me, but seeing you purposefully deny your own health just because of your ideas of righteousness and pity is what's really going to hurt me. So yes, we're going out to lunch and you better enjoy it."

Ed just shakes his head with a slight smile. "You know, you really are something, Al."

They trail through the streets, shoving through crowds of people in search of somewhere to eat. There isn't much they can find that suits Ed's taste. They haven't been in Central long enough to know their way around and it seems that there aren't all too many restaurants around here.

They're just about to give up when Al sees it—or hears it.

They're passing in front of a cozy looking place with the lights of the name sign flickering, the 'T' in the title sputtering out. There's an old-timey look to the place like someone had tried to replicate the aesthetic of another century when designing it.

There's an air of scantiness, the reason Al didn't give it a second glance when he saw it from across the street earlier, but now he stops right where he stands and stares in, completely unmoving.

The facade of the restaurant is filled with windows and Al can see right in. There're wooden chairs and tables set up across the room and a bar at the back.

But it's in the front corner near the window that _she_ sits.

There's a woman seated at a piano, her hair in two long braids and her green dress faded in the yellow light that shines down on her. Her eyes are closed as her fingers dance along the keys.

The woman, whoever she is, is singing as she plays the piano. It isn't any kind of song Al knows, but the soft melody of her words and the sound of the keys blur together in a ghostly harmony. She's good, a siren with her song entrancing him, leaving him stupefied on the doorstep.

It's been a year. Al thinks about that ever night as he sits huddled in the dark. He thinks how it's been a year, a damn calendar year since he lost his body, but in all that time he never once heard music. He's never heard soft string lullabies be played or the stirring of the radio jazz. They didn't play music at the Rockbells' house, at least not that Al was aware of.

This is the first time he's ever heard something so sweet. The first time he's ever head _music_.

"Al," Ed says behind him, and a hollow clang echoes through Al as his brother pats him on the back with his automail hand, drawing him out of his trance.

"I—"

Al turns back to Ed, looking down at his brother and simply pointing inside in amazement.

Ed sends him that cheeky grin, the same one he wore when the Colonel handed him the pocket watch which is now clipped to his belt like a medallion. He must understand, Al can see it all in his eyes.

"Let's eat here today," Ed decides, walking past Al and into the restaurant where the pianist sings. "It looks like a place we can both enjoy."

**.oOo.**

Through the years they learn. In the library they find out about a legendary alchemical substance with the powers of God. It's the only thing that can break the pattern of equivalent exchange and so perhaps it is the only thing that can turn back the tides and bring them back the bodies they've lost. The Philosopher's Stone, it's called, and it just might be the key to everything they could have ever hoped for.

There's a pattern to their months. Library, research. They leave for some far outreach of the country based on the slightest lead that the Colonel can dig up and give to them. Those always leave them coming up empty handed and often end in disaster. The other half the other travelling they do is on mandatory work required by the military. Usually it's simple, mundane tasks, ones that don't require all too much work but leave Ed sour anyway. Al tries not to complain.

And then, when Al is fourteen and five years older than when he was first locked in this metal prison, the Colonel hands them a lead in a thicker folder than any other they have ever been given. It looks more promising too. This time there's some concrete evidence to say this will lead them back to the Stone, not just some phony speculation. Al tries not to let himself hope, just in case this isn't it and they'll come back with nothing, but the seed of hope has already been planted and so Al lets it grow.

Maybe, just maybe, he can finally be set free.

There's a man in Liore called Father Cornello who calls himself a prophet of God. The people say he can turn water to wine with the touch of his fingertips. If he wanted to shatter the earth he could do so with a stomp of his foot. Cornello is the miracle maker. Anything he wishes, so long as he does it in the name of his god, will turn from dream to reality.

They also say he can bring the dead back to life. As a prophet of the sun-god Leto, he can resurrect as he pleases. Just like the sun his god represents rises each and every morning, so will the bodies of the dead. His followers never have to worry about death nor illness, not when they can be revived without thought.

When they get to the city made of desert gold, they meet a woman there named Rosé who tells them exactly that. She lost her fiancé a year ago but she's certain Father Cornello can bring him back to life. She prays to the Sun God blindly, not caring what he says or makes her do. According to her, anything is worth it so long as she can have her precious fiancé back.

Al doesn't have the heart to tell her that isn't possible, that the dead can't be brought back to life like she so strongly believes.

Ed does though.

They're led to a rally of the Sun Prophet and the see Cornello in action for themselves. Here it's all a public spectacle. Cornello walks onto the stage to the sound of cheers and applause and performs tricks for them like a circus dog being pulled on a leash. They're clearly feats of alchemy, obvious by their jolting red energy, but they're still impressive even to Al.

And then his non-existent breath catches as a little girl brings a bird caught motionless in her hands up to the stage.

Ed bounces around, trying to get a better view of what is about to happen, but Al can see it all perfectly. Maybe his height does have _some _advantages.

The bird is a soft green, like the clovers that cover half the hill behind their ashen house. The girl can't be more than six, too young to understand death, though Al figured it out much younger. She doesn't know that death is permanent, not if she's used to watching Cornello bring creatures back to life.

As Cornello takes the bird in his hands, the fourth finger of his left hand is emblazoned with a ring with a stone brighter than any ruby and it catches Al's eye and he realizes that surely this must be it. All this time they've been searching and here it is, the Philosopher's Stone, the answer to all their problems. It's right in front of them and if Al were any closer, he could probably just simply reach out and take it.

The holy choir dressed in red raise up their voices as Cornello lifts up the bird for the crowd to see. They sound absolutely angelic as they sing and the sun glints brightly off the Stone like a blinding beacon which is then reflected off Al's polished, metal surface.

Cornello takes a deep breath and the bird takes flight and the crowd goes wild.

"Impossible," Ed whispers beside him as the bird flies overhead.

"I told you he could do it," Rosé says, and there's more than a hint of pride there.

They watch on further and watch as Cornello brings his hands over a blind man's eyes, pulling them away as the man opens them and blinks in the sun. He lifts a crippled woman up from the ground and tells her to walk.

There's a deaf girl no older than ten. Cornello puts his hands over her ears, the ring flashes in the sun, and then he brings them away and the crowd goes crazy with cheers once more. She sobs as she looks up to him.

_Thank you, _she signs, tears dribbling off her chin, _thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou._

Ed and Al confront Cornello not too much later. What starts as harsh words of non-believers turns into rage and fury and before they know it, they're running for their lives as Cornello tries to kill them, Al cradling Rosé in his arms.

There're chimeras and clergymen with their machine guns and Cornello in the middle of it all, commanding the earth with divine power.

Al just feels bad Rosé has to sit here at witness it all. From a front row seat she gets to watch the fall of her own god and the city descend into chaos as Cornello's intentions are announced to the rest of the world.

He feels bad and he empathizes with her, he really does, but he can't let her sit idly and indifferent any longer.

And then the Stone falls, heavy as a hammer, and it with, so does all of Al's hopes.

From the gold band of the ring falls the ruby red stone which tumbles to the ground and shatters into a million and one little pieces. Each shard dissolves into steam as it makes contact with the cathedral floor and before anyone knows it, the Stone is gone with the wind like it was only just a dream.

Before they leave, it's Ed who calls out to Rosé and tells her to move on. If she keeps dwelling on what has happened, if she continues to hang onto hope that her fiancé will one day be brought back to her through divine intervention, then only bad can happen. She has to stand up on her own two legs, the ones she has been given as a token of her humanity, and walk. She needs to move on.

Al wishes Ed would take some of his own advice one of these days. Al sees how he still dwells on his sins of the past, no matter how little Al cares what happened to him and doesn't blame Ed at all, Ed still blames himself completely.

The train ride back to headquarters is a dreary affair. When the train snakes closer to East City it begins to rain and the whole world drains to gray, reflecting how Al feels. Ed tries to apologize like he does after every failed mission, but like every other time Al tells him to save it, that it wasn't his fault and so he shouldn't blame himself. They fall into a silence after that, one that is slightly awkward and filled with so many stirring emotions until Ed falls asleep around dusk.

It's only when he's in the privateness of his own sleepless slumbers that Al allows himself to break.

This failure feels like another crack to his armor that Ed_ can't _fix with his alchemy.

**.oOo.**

With their spirits low, it isn't too long before something new pops up again. It isn't a lead so concrete like Liore, but Mustang offers to get them acquainted with one of the smartest alchemists in the Eastern area with one of the largest personal collections of alchemy books and it isn't something Ed can turn down.

Here in the military, Ed has figured out that not all alchemists are created equal. That sounds like a bad thing, in theory, but it isn't. It's just the way things are.

It's actually rather beneficial to Ed since his reputation as the State's best dog allows him a little more leeway than most.

Not every alchemist specializes in an area of alchemy that is beneficial to use in the field. Some alchemists specialize in research and study, so unlike Ed who runs out on crazy missions and does the military's bidding, some work in labs or even at home.

Shou Tucker is one of these alchemists.

On the way over to his house, Mustang recounts Tucker's groundbreaking research to Ed and Al and they can't help but be in awe by it. This man made a chimera that could _speak. _He gave a voice to a creature that otherwise would have remained silent.

The flip side comes sharp like a knife though. It's like a funny, little wound knowing that the only sentence the animal ever spoke was a request for death before promptly starving itself over the next couple of days until its wish was granted. That stirs something mushy in Ed's stomach, like cold grits left sitting on the counter all morning, but he tries his best to focus on the theoretics of it and the great advancement of such studies.

When they pull up through the cast iron gate and around the circle drive, Ed mistakes the house for a castle the first time he sees it. Tucker's entire estate is comprised of lush, green lawns and an amazingly large house and the whole property is surrounded in a wrought-iron fence. This man must be making quite the salary to lead this cushy lifestyle.

But the exterior of the home is a poor representation of what lies within. It surprises Ed how noticeably bare it is when he enters. It isn't that the place is lacking in furniture or accessories, it has them all and is decorated like it belongs in a home design catalogue.

Rather, it's a lack of human touch that seems to leave it feeling so empty. It's a house that has residents, but not a house that's _lived _in. It's a house that can be purchased or bought, a house that can be slept in every night by the two residents who reside there, but it's a house that can never be _known._

There's a cold sterility that fills its halls.

Mr. Tucker is nice enough, though he seems a smidge too interested in Al's condition for Ed's liking.

However, the true prize inside is the six-year-old girl with the two twin braids and a heart of gold.

Nina and Alexander are the only sight of warmth in this place. Her laughter fills the halls when Al chases her down them, sock puppets stretched out over his gauntlets. Alexander, the fluffy white pooch, follows her everywhere she goes, her giant guardian much in the same way Al constantly sticks by Ed.

Ed knows they're here to research and learn from the books that Tucker offers to them so generously, but he can't help how distracted he gets by Nina and all the fun they have with her. She's a nice break from their harsh reality.

She braids flower crowns for them much the same way Winry used to and places them on their heads, crowning Ed and Al as her royal princes of the court. One time she filled every crack and crevice of Al so full of flowers that by the time she was done with him he was a monument to all the life that flowed freely around them.

She's funny and joyous and has a little laugh like a million tinkering bells.

She even begins to call Ed 'big brother', something that he's unbelievably touched by.

If anything, she reminds him so much of Al when he was younger. She's filled with an endless curiosity so much bigger than anything she can articulate. She's patient and kind and is filled with a deep, compassionate light. Here she is, in this big, cold house growing up without a mother the same way he and Al did, and something burns so fiercely within Ed that tells him he must protect her.

He couldn't give Alphonse the life he deserved. The life full of joy and sunshine and comfort, but maybe he can make up for it now and give it to Nina instead.

They play with her outside as much as they can, and Ed knows he's neglecting his research, but he can't help it. There's something purely euphoric about chasing her around in the sun and watching her use Al as a slide and ride around on Alexander like he's a majestic horse instead of an oversized dog.

In the evenings Al will make dinner for them and Ed will set the table. He always sets places for four, just so that Al feels more included and he sets one for Mr. Tucker as well even though he's never actually joined them before. Ed would rather have a plate of food there waiting for him than no plate at all, not when he's been so kind to let them stay here and study.

Sometimes Nina will help Al in the kitchen, coming out covered in flour while Al carries out steamed dumplings. Other nights she'll pick flowers for the table or try her best helping Ed put out the silverware. No matter what they do, the three of them always have a blast together.

At night when the sun goes down, they'll take Nina up to her bedroom and Ed will tuck her into bed while Al reads her stories.

They find out pretty early on that Nina's room doesn't contain some of the typical things Ed would expect to find in a child's bedroom. There are dolls and an extravagant dollhouse made of oak. There're plenty of dresses and shoes and hair accessories. Everything that one would expect to be there is there, but only in a superficial way. The things that tell him that this is a room that has been loved are missing.

There aren't little school drawings taped to the wall, plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. There are certainly no picture books because no one's ever read to Nina before. Ed wonders how in a house so full of books there can be such a lack of stories.

Instead, they start bringing her their own, checking out the same ones they remember from when they were kids to bring over to her to read at night.

They teach her many things that it seems no one had the time to teach her before. Ed shows her how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and how to tie her shoelaces, so she'll stop asking Al, whose fingers are too big to make bows, to do it for her. Al even teaches her a few signs and though she doesn't quite comprehend the full meaning of them and what they are, Ed can see simply from her expression that she understands that they are extremely important to Al and so she tries her best.

When she's fast asleep at night they sneak out of her room as quietly as they can back into their own room and watch as Alexander curls up on the end of her bed, a silent guardian to protect her through the night.

Ed knows he isn't supposed to be looking for a sense of home, that that's exactly what October third was about, but he can't help but begin to find the same associations of warmth and comfort that comes from finding a home here. Not because there is anyone providing those feelings for him, but rather because he is trying _his_ best to provide them for Nina.

Ed can't help but notice Tucker's unconventional parenting style. He isn't one to criticize Shou Tucker, especially when he's been nothing but a gracious host, but it doesn't seem like he gives Nina what she needs. She's so full of life and her energy knows no bounds. She needs someone other than her dog to look after her, and Ed knows he and Al can't stay forever, no matter how much they might like to.

Tucker also always has a sense of panic about him that flows just below the surface of everything he says and does. Ed asks Al about it one night and Al says he's noticed it too, and Al is always a better judge of character than Ed is, so if he senses it too then it must be true. Maybe that's just the kind of person Tucker is, one with an ever present urgency, but something about this just feels _off. _

It's evening when it happens, it's always evening when the things go wrong. It's like the laws of nature are turned off as the world goes dark, anything can happen then.

Ed and Al go out that morning to cross reference some of the research they've looked into at the Tucker estate with another book at the East City Library. They return close to midnight, and when they get back, they notice the front door is already open, ever so slightly ajar on its hinges.

That's the first sign that something is wrong.

Ed takes a deep, shaking breath.

He's seen this exact image once before. An open door that should be closed, slamming open and shut in the wind. It was the same when they found Mom.

Due to the house's emptiness, every move made in it always leaves a sizable echo, but tonight it seems like every sound has been amplified. When Al clanks with each step, it's as loud as standing directly under the church bells ringing in the tower of Cornello's chapel.

A few lights are left on upstairs, but for the most part the house is dark.

"Nina?" Ed calls out, all his senses screaming. He doesn't think anything bad has happened per se, but he doesn't like the pit that's opening in his stomach.

"Ed, be quiet, they're probably asleep!"

Al has a fair point, but that doesn't make Ed feel any better.

"We should probably tell Mr. Tucker we're back," Ed says, "he's definitely still up."

Al agrees and they head towards the part of the house where his laboratory is located. As far as they know, Mr. Tucker never sleeps. They've never known a moment where he wasn't awake and hard at work down in the lab. They hardly ever see him during the day, but they always see the kerosene lamp lit and burning in his window.

There's silence in the house except for each clunk of their feet.

The door to the lab has been left ajar. From outside in the hall Ed can see only the back of Mr. Tucker leaning over a circle on the floor. There's some kind of light lit in the room, but it's limited and its ghostly glow casts long shadows over everything that move at unnatural angles.

"Mr. Tucker?" Ed asks, pushing the door open all the way and stepping into the laboratory with Al following a step behind him.

"Edward," Mr. Tucker says in a strained-sounding voice. He turns around and looks at the boys standing in the doorway. There's something different about him now. Mr. Tucker was never a very lively man, but it looks now like death has washed over him and stolen the life right from his eyes. He looks deranged.

"Edward, Alphonse," he repeats, "you were just the people I was hoping to see."

Something about the statement, as normal as it would be, sends shivers down Ed's spine and puts a bad feeling in his stomach.

"I just created the second ever talking chimera."

Whatever Ed is expecting Tucker to say, it isn't this.

"You did?"

"Yes," Tucker says, a hint of amusement in his voice, "why don't you two take a look."

Tucker steps back and behind him sits a giant, majestic beast. It's a large white creature with a mane of brown trailing down it's back. Ed expected the process of creating such a beast to be a messy, grueling thing, but the creature that sits before them is clean with a touch of domestication. Ed wonders how Tucker did it.

Ed crawls over to the beast to get a better look at it. He holds his hand out in front of it like it's a cat and he's getting it used to his scent, but the chimera doesn't move. Instead it sits there, blank-eyed, perfectly still.

There's something in its big, pale blue eyes that is hauntingly empty. They're eyes that doesn't have their own spark of life so they mirror the stars in their best imitation like a poorly made simulacrum. There's something off about its presence, something as unnatural as the very inhuman nature that it was born from.

"It really talks?" Ed asks, still hesitant to believe that such a feat can be done.

"Of course it does," Tucker turns to the beast, the lenses of his glasses flaring in the dim lighting of the room and obscuring his eyes. "How about you say hello to Edward."

The chimera is slow to move. Its head tilts up like molasses to its master and then turns to where Ed stands, head tipping slightly at his much shorter nature.

"Ed—ward," it chokes out, it's voice like something distorted and broken. He expects a record scratch, the distortion to grow even further, but instead the creature's voice only grows more confident. "Edward."

Ed hears a gasp from Al behind him, one that sounds less like mere shock and more like something heavier, a terrified epiphany.

"Edward," it repeats a few more times, and slowly Ed raises an eyebrow at the creature.

There's something familiar about the way it croaks, the way the second syllable of his name sounds slightly upturned like the creature is speaking with excitement.

"Big brother," it chokes out in heavy words. "Ed-ward."

_Big brother._

_Edward._

And then it all falls.

Ed flies as he moves, launching himself as Tucker and knocking the older man to the floor. Where he was once impressed by the alchemist and his sciences, he is now a screaming terror of rage and vehemence, striking Tucker across the face again and again and again.

He's going to kill him. He's going to take this man's life tonight and leave him here a bloody corpse alone on the floor of his laboratory.

It's more mercy than he deserves. Not after what he's just done to his daughter.

"How could you?" Ed screams, his bangs falling across his face as he yells. "How could you do this to your own daughter, your own family?"

Tucker laughs. There's blood spilling down his face and a shard of glass from his broken lenses sticking out of his cheek but still he finds amusement in the situation anyway.

"Don't act like we're so different, Edward. Need I remind you of what _you _did to your family? Your little brother?"

Edwards sees red. He hits him again. He can't feel any pain or force in his right arm because it's made of metal, so he just keeps going at it over and over again and again as he hears the plate of bones crush under his force.

"We're not anything alike!" He screams. The voice in his ears doesn't sound anything like his own. It's broken and screeching and so exacerbated it sounds like it belongs to wrath itself.

Ed pulls his arm back again to wind up and strike the bloodied man some more, but something catches his fist.

"Brother."

Al's voice is quiet compared to the drumming of Ed's heart in his ears. He punches to the beat of his own fury and raw adrenaline.

Ed turns back to face his little brother. He knows what he must look like, eyes bewildered and feral like a rabid creature from the wild.

"Brother, stop. You're going to kill him."

"I—"

Nina—Nina and Alexander—walk up beside Ed and he watches it—them—with wide eyes.

"Daddy," it moans, nudging its father with its nose. "Daddy's hurt."

A moment of silence takes place as the chimera turns to him with its morning sky eyes.

"Why did you hurt Daddy?"

Ed has no reply to that. How can he tell a child he's punching the life out of the only person in the world she truly loves because he's turned her into a monster? There's no way to break that gently, to break that at all.

Tucker, to a true testament to his insanity, laughs again.

"See? We're really not all that different," he repeats with a smile, showing off the blood between his broken teeth.

"Mr. Tucker," Al says back, his voice calm and steady, but Ed can feel the edge of cold fury that spikes out of it like a sheet of hard metal. This is the same Al that confronted Mustang when he picked Ed up by the collar and Ed heard his little brother speak for the first time. This is the Alphonse that even Ed fears.

"Mr. Tucker if you don't shut up then _I'll _be the one to snap."

Edward scuttles backward ever so slightly at that. For as kind and compassionate and meek as Al may be, he isn't weak by any meaning of the word. He's stronger than Ed himself and he _will _follow through that promise if it comes down to the wire.

Al make be compassionate and kind, but that doesn't erase the blunt ruthlessness he is capable of if pushed to the edge. If Al's threatening to kill Mr. Tucker right here right now, Ed has no doubt in his mind that he _will_ make good on that promise if Tucker speaks again.

Tucker shuts up. He must hear Al's knife-wielding malice as well.

And when there is nothing more to be said, nothing more to do, when the deed is done, things fall away. Ed is stripped of his fury, filled with nothing more than breath-stealing horror. He holds onto Nina, trying not to look at the bloody mess that is her father in the corner, and whispers to her that it will all be okay.

It won't be, he knows that it won't be, but he can't tell her that. All he knows how to say is that it will all be okay.

The hours after pass by in a rushing blur. Ed remembers Al making the call, picking up the phone and profusely apologizing to Mustang repeatedly for calling him at such an hour. He remembers Al leading him out of the house and sitting him down on the front steps and wrapping a snug blanket around him.

At least someone can keep their head in a situation like this. Ed doesn't know where he would be without Al always having his back for him.

He remembers the rain starting to come down as the sun tries to break the sky, but the clouds are so heavy and dark that almost no light gets through. There's the blur of the flashing light of the military cars that roll up in a state of emergency. There's Mustang's back turned to him and a frown on his lips, Hawkeye with her gun drawn and several other military personnel wandering the grounds.

_Nina, _is all Ed can think.

He's never going to see Nina smile that brilliant, little smile ever again.

**.oOo.**

Alphonse know that he's empty, that he doesn't have organs or lungs or any body parts at all, but that doesn't stop the sensation of choking that he feels now.

He knows in the bed beside him Brother doesn't sleep, but his back is turned away from Al, making him feel just as lonely as always. Somehow, though, he thinks having Ed face him while they remain silent would make things even worse.

Al feels like the walls of the bedroom are closing in around him. He feels trapped, like an eagle in a birdcage. He's always feels trapped, he's spent the past five years growing accustomed to the sensation and letting it become his new normal, but he feels even more trapped tonight than usual.

He wants to step outside and breathe in a breath of fresh air with lungs that aren't there. When he sits huddled in the corner at night he always tells himself that maybe, just _maybe_ if he were to get one night of sleep then he could learn to be okay.

Now he doesn't even think that will help him.

Al's used to feeling like a stranger in his own body. He's familiar with being itchy in his own metal skin, his fingers aching to scratch away at the steel until he's red and bleeding.

But tonight the feeling is worse than ever.

Al can't stop seeing flashes and images of the past few hours repeatedly like someone reeling out an infinite film. He sees the terror on Brother's face, the anger in his eyes like he's been possessed by a demon. He punches Tucker without mercy, blood squirting everywhere and soaking his clothes, flesh caught between his metal knuckles.

Tucker was hardly recognizable as human by the time Al had stepped in.

And worst of all is the image of Nina that runs like wildfire through his mind.

They were there to play with her, to protect her. He and Ed liked to think they're so strong, so full of glorified bravado, but in the end they couldn't even protect one little girl and her dog.

All they wanted was to give herself a better future, a better childhood they ever had. They saw the cycle of despair attempting to repeat itself in the Tucker's household when they first arrived and they really thought they were intervening. They thought they were finally doing some good, saving a little girl from her loneliness.

They were wrong. So very very wrong.

They didn't stop anything, didn't prevent any kind of Armageddon, they only sat back and watched as it persisted, the cycle never ending.

Here is another child, innocence gone too soon, trapped in a distorted body that isn't her own.

It's a feeling of deep despair that comes over Al at the realization that this situation is so similar to his own.

Perhaps the groundworks of the universe have been laid out long ago, each action and happening written down as prophecy. No matter how hard you try to stop certain events from happening, they were set in motion long before your birth and your destined to walk them. Perhaps there was no preventing the things that happened to him, the things that happened to Nina. The cycle cannot be stopped because everything was slated as fate by the universe before he was even named. Maybe each and every person of this earth is just a marionette being pulled along their path in life by an empyrean string.

Al wants to believe that he can be better than he is now, that he could have done something to save Nina, but believing in anything better keeps getting harder. He's so afraid one of these days his well of hope will run dry and he will have nothing good left to believe in.

Perhaps all of this trying and trying to save themselves is worthless; they can't be saved. The universe deemed them not worth saving long ago, their search forever uncontrollable and fruitless.

He should just get used to this senseless misery while he's ahead before they waste any more time running around in vain limbo.

Nina continues to run circles in his mind, pulling him down deeper.

Her slow, dragging voice. _Big Brother Edward. _It makes Al feel sick.

They didn't see it coming. Al, when he was younger, used to pride himself on his perceptiveness. He was so good a picking out all the little details and becoming privy to secrets before he was supposed to know. He was good at reading people, an expert at it even, but it's like that skill has vanished now when it matters most. It isn't gone altogether, but he no longer has that keen, sharp edge.

The problem now is that it seems like the senses he does have, the only two that he has left to stand on, have been dulled.

There's a power in the silence, sometimes ignorance _is _bliss. Things would have been so much better if he didn't have to hear _that_, if he didn't have ears that worked because then he wouldn't have to listen to Nina's doggy voice cry and moan as Edward stained Tucker's face unrecognizable He wouldn't have had to listen to Brother's voice break and Tucker's merciless jests. He misses his ignorance.

Al realizes that hearing means nothing. There was no verbal cue of what was to happen, only the realization from his instincts he developed when he was deaf. Perhaps he was better off that way.

He has to get out of here. He has to get out of here.

Al unfolds himself, not caring about how loud he's being. He races towards the closed bedroom door like he's about to be sick and he needs to find a basin to puke into.

"Don't," Ed croaks out from the bed behind him.

"What?" Al asks, his voice barely above a whisper. He turns around and looks at Ed lying in the bed. He looks impossibly small bundled under all the blankets. Like that, Al can't see the glimmer of metal limbs and he can almost pretend that Ed is whole.

"Don't leave me."

"I—" Al pulls his hand away from the doorknob and turns back to his brother. "I won't."

Al lowers his hands in front of him and twitches his fingers in a nervous fit. He won't leave Ed alone, he understands why Ed wouldn't want him to step out, even if it's just into the other room, but now he can't even escape. He's confined here to pretend to breathe in the same choked air.

Ed rolls over to the other side of the bed and pats the space he's just made with his hand for Al to come and sit. Al scuffles over but doesn't take the seat.

"Do you mind if I open the window? I can't—I can't—" Al clamps his hands together, trying to find his words. "I feel like I can't breathe."

Al knows there's no way that's even physically possible, but Ed must get it because he nods and Al goes to open the window and looks out to the full moon. He hopes it isn't chilly tonight.

He takes his place on the bedside and looks down at Ed who watches him with honeyed eyes like a cat's. Ed pulls his right arm out from under the covers and extends it to Al who takes the metal hand in his leather gauntlets.

It's such a shame. Here they are, side by side and touching, but as far away from each other as two people can possibly be.

**.oOo.**

When the sun rises in the morning, the rain comes back with it and the humidity is oppressing. Alphonse cooks him a breakfast of eggs and toast, but Ed doesn't have the stomach for it and Al doesn't say a word about it when he finds the breakfast untouched.

Ed sits at the stool at the kitchen counter in their apartment and bounces his leg repeatedly. It's like if he stops moving, even for an instant, then the dam will break and everything he is feeling right now will come crashing down in on him.

The two brothers don't say much to each other that morning. It reminds Ed of those first few weeks after the transmutation, what little of them that he can remember, and the awkward way that Al acted. The way he never stayed in one place for too long, always working and fixing whatever he could find because if he couldn't fix himself then he could work his ass off trying to fix everything else in their broken life.

This now is so much like that, except they're both silent, and not because they think the other has to be. It's the heavy experience and memories of the day before that quiet them.

Ed takes a shower and tries to wash the stench of flesh out from between his knuckles and the itch off his skin, but there isn't much he can actually do in that regard. He cannot clean himself of what he's witnessed. This is going to have to stick to him forever.

When he's done he gets dressed quickly, throwing on the black attire and pulling his bright red coat over his shoulders. It looks faded somehow, more so than before, different in the overcast light. Quickly he tugs on his red-soled boots.

_I can't be here,_ he signs to Alphonse as he rushes into the living room, his hair still unbraided and wet. _I can't stay here anymore._

Al, to his everlasting credit, doesn't question what Ed means. He simply gets up and follows Ed out the front door, making sure to lock it and drop the keys into his cuisse pouch as they go.

Ed thinks this must be the same way Al was feeling last night when he opened the window with a fidgeting jitter about him. If you find yourself locked in a room where the bad memories lurk, then you'll drive yourself mad. Ed can't stay here, he has to keep moving. He can't sit down and stay in one place too long because he can't let the events of the past, all of the past, catch up on him.

He has to keep running.

Ed sprints down the slick pavement in front of the military dorms, not looking behind him to see if Al is following or not. He knows he is, he can hear those hollow footsteps against the stones as Al chases behind him.

They run for what feels like far too long and far too short of a time. By the time Ed stops running, he's reached the lip of a fountain under one of Central's many bell towers and kneels, resting his head on the marble and soaking the front of his pants as he kneels in the puddles.

He knows he can't run from his problems because they're not physical monsters he _can _run from, but he's cold and wet and out of breath and tired and he wants to try.

Ed ends up picking himself up from kneeling on the pavement and sits on the ledge of the fountain where Al joins him. The bell towers ring over and over, their sound muffled by the pouring sheets of rain that fall all around them.

"You know," Edward starts, his voice low, "maybe Tucker was right. Maybe we are just the same."

"Brother—"

"He didn't understand it, and I thought it understood it, but I didn't. Alchemy is a circle. It's a flow from life to death and that death breeding life. Over and over again. But I—I tried to break that circle, I messed with the very laws of the universe. Tucker tried that too. It didn't turn out great for either than us."

"Brother," there's more conviction in Al's voice than Ed thinks Al can possibly be capable of at a time like this, "you shouldn't say things that are untrue."

"But I—" Ed sits up straight and tries to look his brother in the eyes, but there's something that catches his attention in front of him. Just before where they sit there's a man that approaches.

He's an unusual man at that, his face is set in a deep frown and his white hair is plastered to his head by the rain in a way that makes it look gray. He wears a yellow jacket that reminds Ed of a picture of a Xingese monk's cloak. There's a heavy presence to the stranger, one that paints him as somehow otherworldly.

"Are you Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist?" the man asks.

Ed's caught off guard by how the stranger can know his identity. "Yes, that's me."

The man lunges and Ed's world spins.

**.oOo.**

Al doesn't have to worry about the limitations of the body, which is both a blessing and a curse, but right now, as he sits in the rain and wishes it would wash away his sorrows, it feels more like a curse than ever before. He can't even feel the drops of rain hit his skin. He can hear them and the metallic ring they leave when they ping against him, but he cannot feel them at all.

But there's a certain lightness in not having to wait for the slower reactions of the body. The only reflex that Al has to depend on is the speed of his mind.

When he sees the man with the glasses lunge at Ed, Al doesn't even have time to think. He just grabs Brother and pulls him out of the way.

And then they're running. Running down alleyways and through neighborhoods, through side streets and behind buildings. They run faster than they ran that morning when Ed sprinted from the dormitories and into the town square.

But the stranger is fast and losing him is hard.

Ed resurrects a barrier behind them as they turn down another alleyway and not for the first time Al curses his slow, hand-drawn alchemy. If only he could figure out how to perform clap alchemy like Ed then he could try harder to deter the man.

An explosion sounds behind them and Al sees the wall burst apart into a million flying pieces. There's a crackling energy about the man and Al watches on as his tattoo blows chunks of concrete away as easily as if it's sand. He too doesn't seem to need a circle as far as Al can tell.

The most notable feature about the man, other than his glasses and his yellow coat and white hair, is the scar that mars his forehead. It's a giant X-shape and spans almost the entire expanse of his head.

They all go on for a while, chasing the man in a game of cat and mouse, but eventually, with his explosive alchemy, the scarred man traps them in an alleyway.

He begins to go on some tirade, some bullshit about creators and destroyers and the laws of alchemy. Al doesn't listen though, he's heard it all before from every psycho alchemist they've had to deal with on their quests, and instead focuses his attention on finding a way to get them out of here.

He hopes Ed gets his signal. If they blow up the rubble that he's dropped in their way then hopefully they can stir up enough dust to block the man's view and lose him, but he knows he's already lost him when Ed bends down and transmutes a knife out of a broken metal pipe.

_Oh Brother._

Ed charges towards the alchemist and Al follows, preferring to rely on his brute strength rather than guns and knives.

Al thinks he's made it past the scarred man, but the alchemist is fast and Al sees the blue crackle of raw alchemical energy from his hand before he has time to realize what is happening.

If there's one thing you must understand, it's that Al is no stranger to falling apart, but it's all very different when it's with a body that can feel every sensation and one that can feel nothing at all.

Al watches himself break. He looks on as tiny scraps of metal fly up into the sky and fall to the ground in a litter like sparkling diamonds lighting up as they twist in the dim light. It looks so familiar to the night in the basement, the one where it wasn't human hands that broke him apart, but rather the millions of tiny black hands. He's being peeled apart, layer by layer until there's nothing there left of him and all he can think about is how he remembers this.

Al doesn't scream as the remainder of him comes crashing back down to earth.

"ALPHONSE!" he hears Ed scream from somewhere beside him. He's landed facedown so he cannot see any of the action that happens around him, but he can hear the sloshing of the puddles and the claps of hands and the crackle and thunder of alchemy happening all around him. There's a battle raging above him and he's a fallen soldier. He's damaged goods now and he can do nothing about it.

There's a similar sound to the explosion that blasted Al's body apart, but on a lesser scale and Al can only imagine what has just transpired.

With the remaining arm he does have, Al drags himself into an alleyway like a cat wandering away for a place to lay down and die at the end of her years. He's able to get a good hold on himself though and props his broken body up against a brick wall so he can watch the battle in real-time.

The air cracks with lightning again and again and finally the scarred alchemist gets a good position on Ed and sends his right arm flying in a million broken pieces, scattering across the road just like Al's armor only a few minutes prior.

Al doesn't even remember screaming then, he doesn't remember making a sound, but he _must have _because he can hear the sound of his own distorted voice and the desperation in his words.

"EDWARD! BROTHER, RUN!"

But he doesn't run. He doesn't pick himself up at all and his damp hair falls around him in coils. Al can't look, he doesn't want to look, but he can't turn away now and even if he wanted to close his eyes so he won't see, it doesn't matter. That's an ability that's been taken from him now.

The alchemist in yellow leans down and says something in his deep voice, but Al can't make it out above the rain.

This is all like some fucked up version of a nightmare, only he isn't dreaming anymore. He hasn't dreamed in a long time. This is real. It's so damn real. He's going to watch his brother get his guts blown out all across the cobblestones as he sits there immobile and incapable of doing anything.

When it comes down to it, he's useless. Always. He's always the one who needs saving, the fool in the silver casket. He can do nothing but watch.

"Please," Ed replies back to whatever the man has said to him loud enough so that his voice carries over to Al in the alleyway. "You can take my life, but please spare my brother's. He isn't a State Alchemist, he did nothing wrong."

_You didn't either, Brother._

But Al returns to screaming. Screaming for his brother, screaming for him to run. He isn't worth it. Al isn't worth the price of Ed's life. This isn't equivalent exchange, not when Ed is a good person with so much life in him and Al is only halfway living, tethered to this life by a single, bloodied thread.

If anyone is going to die, it should be him.

It's only now, now that Al has a voice, does he feel more powerless than ever. What's the point of being able to scream and to speak when no one will listen to you?

Ed hears his screaming, Al knows he does, but he doesn't listen. He doesn't even look in Al's direction. Instead, he keeps his eyes trained to the sky and Al knows Ed doesn't believe in any kind of god but he almost looks like he's been caught in prayer.

And then Ed brings the only hand he has remaining and moves it in a fist in a circular motion in the center of his chest.

_I'm sorry._

Al's screaming as the explosion goes off. He imagines only the worse. He sees the blood in his mind, the same blood that flooded down Tucker's face last night when Ed almost punched the very life out of him. He expects to see it all, the pulsing organs like Mom's second corpse or the decaying flesh, but none of it is actually there.

The sound, the loud boom that he was sure would be his brother's last earthly sight, isn't the sound of his face exploding against the pavement. It's the sound of a gun being fired directly in the scarred man's direction.

Riza Hawkeye.

The bullet strays from its intended course. Not because Hawkeye's aim is off, but it strays because the man has reflexes like a dancer and dodges out of the way with such speed that he moves almost as fast as the lightning bolts of energy that crackle from his explosion-inducing arm.

There's a scuffle that takes place. Flying debris and cinder blocks and pavement stones, but Al pays attention to none of it. He has eyes only for Ed, Ed who lays on the pavement still unmoving, in some state of shock.

And then in an instant he's up and moving, running over to Al with such sorrow in his eyes that Al almost falls for it. _Almost_ being the key word. He isn't going to let Brother so easily get out of what he just attempted to do. Ed isn't off the hook quite yet.

_Oh god, Al,_ Ed signs to him, his fingers moving at a rapid pace.

He looks feral almost, like an animal allowed to run wild. There's hair in his face, in his eyes, such wilderness in the gold irises of his eyes that he looks like some lost boy fallen straight out of a fairytale.

He looks so small here, wet and missing a limb. He's like a drowned little kitten.

_Al, Al, _he signs frantically when Al doesn't respond. _Al are you alright?_

He grabs at the edge of Al's breastplate where the hole has been blown into his side, not caring about the way the jagged remains of metal slice at his fingers.

And then they're yelling and Al hears more fury in his voice than he knew he even had inside himself. He's mad at brother, mad because he was really going to allow himself to die for Al.

_I couldn't, _Al signs, doing his best with the one hand he has after his other arm falls off. _I can't go on without you, Brother. You were going to leave me all alone and I would have had no one. Please, please don't leave me here without you. I won't be able to make it._

Perhaps they're too codependent, their fates too deeply intertwined in their relationship with the other, but Al doesn't care about any of that now. His brother was going to _willingly _die so that he could keep on living; expect how is he supposed to do that when he's all alone? The answer is he wouldn't have been able to. He's mad dan he's exhausted but he can't do this all on his own.

_Alphonse, I wasn't going to leave you to die instead!_

_Brother, you're an idiot! I told you to run and you should have listened! If it wasn't for the military you would have died!_

_For god's sake, Al, I wasn't going to run and leave you alone to die!_

"And how do you know that I would have?" Al switches to yelling with his voice when his arm creaks a little too loud for his taste. "How do you know that I would have died? He wasn't targeting me! But you—" he pauses like he's taking a breath, "Brother you _chose _to die."

"Don't—" and Al can see the fight is starting to run out of him now. It's running out of both of them and leaving only bone-weary numbness behind. "Don't yell at me, I'm still your older brother!"

"Some idiot brother you are!" Al can hear the childish fury in his own voice but he's too angry to feel self-conscious about it now. "Survival, Brother! Survival is the only way! If you live on then we can still find a way to get out bodies back. We have to! We have to because I don't know what I'm going to do otherwise. But—but we can't do that when you're dead. So don't. Don't die on me.

"There are people out there who need you, Brother. Innocent people who need our help, people like Nina. You can't choose to die a meaningless death because how are we supposed to help anyone when you're no longer living?"

There's the final moan in his arm and then it snaps, clattering to the floor with the rest of his rubble.

"We're really falling apart, aren't we, Brother?" Ed asks with a sad little smile. "We look like we belong in a junkyard."

"Yeah."

Because as angry as he is, he can't deny the truth.

"But at least we're alive," and the first rays of sunshine begin to peak through the clouds.

"Yeah, at least we're alive."

Hawkeye and Havoc and Armstrong come up to them then, asking questions about their wellbeing and Hawkeye drapes her military jacket over Ed's shoulders.

Even as they are, broken and desperate and falling apart, there are still people who care about them. People who care if they live or die, if they prosper or fall. There's a whole web of people out there they have to keep going for, people who are rooting for them to succeed in their quest and sometimes Al forgets that.

It doesn't matter how overcast the sky grows or how dim the day, they have to keep going. They can't stop now.


	6. Chapter 6

**"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them-words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."**

**\- Stephen King**

* * *

On the train ride back to Resembool, Alphonse sits with the sheep. He's been reduced to mere luggage now that half his body is gone and he cannot walk on his own. It makes him squirm inside, having to play the part.

_Sit silently and wait,_ he tells himself internally as he's boxed into a crate and carried across the Central station by Major Armstrong. _Be silent and wait,_ he tells himself as the sheep bleat, chasing each other around the fast-moving car and he's sandwiched in the middle of them all.

They make it to Resembool with a few bumps on the way and Alphonse sympathizes for Armstrong who's going to have to carry him all four miles from the train station to the Rockbell residence by foot.

"Don't you worry, young Alphonse, I'll make sure you get there all in one piece," Armstrong voices, hefting Alphonse up on his shoulder.

"I wasn't worrying about myself."

"Well don't you worry about me either. Have you seen these fine muscles? With a fine physique such as this I could carry you across the entirety of Amestris without breaking a sweat!"

He places Al back on the platform and shreds his vest and shirt, flexing for the brothers and all the passersby.

"Now look what you've started, Al. He's never going to stop now."

Brother looks down at his pocket watch in mock concern, "Major Armstrong, we better get going if we want to make it there in time."

In time for what exactly, Edward doesn't specify, and Armstrong doesn't question it. He just picks Al up once more and slings his shirt and vest over his shoulder and they march on. It's a good thing there's no one out here to see them march the path to the Rockbell home. They're an odd trio for sure, the boy in red leading the way followed by a shirtless muscle man carrying a crate containing a broken suit of vintage armor.

Winry is beyond livid when she sees the state of Ed's arm, or rather, the lack thereof. There's screaming and fighting and Al sure is glad Granny sent Armstrong out front to chop wood for the fire so he wouldn't have to witness them battle it out.

The pieces of Al are taken out of the crate that evening and propped up on a tarp under the window similar to how he was on his first night after the transmutation. It feels odd that he can't help around the house like he usually does or join them at the dinner table for meals despite not eating himself, but everyone assures him he doesn't have to worry about it.

Though Al is only here in a state of scrap metal pieces, it's the first time in a long time that he feels like he can truly be himself. He didn't even realize the breath he's been holding while they've been away until they got here and he let it all out. There's a simplicity to Resembool, its slow paces and curving hills. The people here are hardworking and honest, he doesn't have to worry about the swindling and the whispers of Central, people—for better or for worse—are used to seeing him around here, even if he isn't quite who he says he is.

There's a part of Al, a big part really, that misses it here, but he knows he isn't allowed to miss this place. He owes at least that much to Ed.

For the most part, Ed and Al keep their communication to signing between themselves. That isn't just when they come back to Resembool, but it's the case everywhere they go. When it's only the two of them on the train or in their dorm or out walking the streets of Central, they relegate their communications mostly to sign language. It's just what they're used to doing, so it isn't something they're going to give up so easily.

Usually, when they're in public or accompanied by someone else, they'll speak verbally just because that's the accepted norm and sometimes it's more convenient to do. They also keep to speaking mostly verbally when at headquarters since Mustang and Hawkeye are the only two that know Al wasn't always able to hear.

In fact, that's something Ed quite likes to use to their advantage. Whenever the two of them are in front of Mustang, particularly after Ed has just been told off for one thing or another, he'll turn to Al and sign insults about the Colonel right in front of him. Mustang clearly knows what Ed is doing, but just narrows his eyes and doesn't give in to this little game.

The other soldiers of Mustang's unit, to their credit, have stopped asking why they communicate primarily in sign language instead of just speaking to each other when they can both very clearly hear. They tried in the beginning, just like they tried to ask about why Ed had automail or why Al was constantly wearing that suit of armor, but after so long without ever getting any kind of straight answer, they eventually gave it up.

And God, living in Central make Alphonse feel like such a dirty, little liar. He's never lied to anyone about who he is, what he is, not really. He isn't lying, per se, but by telling untruths by keeping parts of himself tucked away he feels like a liar just the same. Lying by omission is a better term for what he does, though he isn't sure if he can call it that since he never really owed the truth to anyone in the first place. In Resembool he lies, he lies straight on when he goes into town here and goes by an identity completely other than his own, but that doesn't even feel as bad. He's very completely unassociated with that piece of himself.

But he feels like a liar because he's never told anyone his secret. He hasn't because no one has ever thought to ask if he were deaf. Why would they when he can so clearly hear now? People don't go from deaf to hearing very often (or ever). Mustang and Hawkeye know the truth, but they're the only ones. No one else in all of Central even has an inkling of it, and it makes Al feel so hollow on the inside.

More people know the truth behind why he lost his body and his mortal sin than people who know he was once deaf. For a long time that was who he was.

So no, he isn't lying, but he definitely isn't living truthfully either, and being deaf is such an integral part of his identity.

They only spend a few days in Resembool, Winry determined to replace the arm Ed broke in only three days.

They all keep busy and Al stays bored. Winry will bring her tools downstairs sometimes, especially in the night when she relegates herself to no sleep for the evening and sits beside Al as she works. It's nice to have company with him, even if it's just for a little while.

He spends the night hours talking to her about their adventures (keeping some of the more violent and gory details out since he doesn't want to worry her) as she sits hunched over the metal of an arm, twisting and turning the bolts and fixing it all together.

They leave Resembool quicker than Al would have liked. He's barely on his feet after Ed patches him all back together before they're swept back onto another train and on their way to Central City.

They're searching for the first branch on the Central Library now after having received a tip in that direction from an alchemist on the run from the military named Tim Marcoh. Marcoh warns them that they're not going to like what they find, if they do ever find what they're looking for. He calls it the devil's research and warns that it is the work from the deepest pits of Hell.

That kind of logic, as terrified as it makes Marcoh appear, isn't enough to deter them from looking for it. They have too much to lose and they've come too far to give it all up now. The devil's research it may be, but they've sinned before, they know the price to be paid for meddling in things that should not be meddled in.

When they arrive in Central, however, the library is gone and in its place are the charred pages of books and cedar shelves.

**.oOo.**

The notes of Tim Marcoh come to them in the form of a cookbook, given to them by a young, unemployed librarian named Sheska. Her memory is something out of a fantasy book, everything she reads is recorded like a photograph stored in the filing cabinet of her mind. It's an incredible skill to have and Ed sincerely hopes she can find somewhere to put her talent to good use. She's saved them big time. This would all just be another dead end if it isn't for her.

If this works out, if the notes of Doctor Tim Marcoh really are the answer they've spent the past five years chasing, then they will owe everything to her.

When they return to Central after their three-day excursion to Resembool, they're met with two soldiers to keep them company. Bodyguards they claim to be, but this has _the Colonel thinks we need a babysitter _written all over it.

Edward and Alphonse spend days locked in a room pouring over the notes of Doctor Tim Marcoh. His code, though decipherable, is highly complex. It turns out that Al's unusual habit of stress baking in their small dormitory kitchenette comes in handy here when trying to pick out the pieces. There's a certain logic in these things, and since Al is already so used to looking at the pages of cookbooks and following what they say, he's rather good at this work.

But as the symbols fall into line, the codes and pieces start to make sense of themselves, something grows deep within Ed like the sinking feeling of poison ivy sprouting up in his liver and bleeding out through his teeth. It isn't a good feeling, that's for sure, and it reminds him of another code, another secret from not too long ago.

Because everything about this slowly, through days of research and comparison back and forth between the journals, starts to feel like Ed is repeating the same things over and over and over. There's not only a cycle to life: death begets life and life begets death, but there're circles to everything and right now he is peering through the looking glass into a deep cycle of suffering.

It's all slowly starting to feel like some old taboo.

It's when they come to the find the final piece of the puzzle, that the secret ingredient to creating the Philosopher's Stone is human lives, that proves his theory of endless cycles true. They've done this all before, the same cycle of darker alchemy that should not be performed. There are some things that humanity is better off not know. Ignorance is not a curse but a blessing.

They're circling around and around on an endless carousel, spiraling deeper and deeper into depths that should be left unknown and unrepeated, yet they can't get the cycle to stop.

They've done this before. They've played before on the fraying threads that hold the universe together, tied their fingers in it. They've performed alchemy that's had its basis in human life.

It didn't end well.

It isn't worth the risk; it isn't worth the cost. Life is life, they can't play in it, not anymore. If this is the only way, then they'll just have to live the rest of their lives in this halfway kind of way.

Ed folds his arms behind his head as a pillow and looks up at the ceiling fan, spinning endlessly above him. Round and round and round it goes, endless spirals, endless circles. On and on, forever and forever.

Human lives. It makes him sick. It was human lives that were used and toyed with, destroyed and broken, all for the purpose of state-sponsored research to create the all-powerful.

It makes him even sicker to think they spent the past five years betting everything on such putrid thing.

They truly thought they could be saved this way. Ed really thought this would be the answer to finally undoing all his earthly mistakes.

"We'll find a way, I promise," Ed says into the open air, knowing Al is sitting on the backside of the green couch in that huddled position that he doesn't realize Ed knows is just a subconscious way of him expressing the feelings he so desperately bottles up inside.

"You don't have to lie to me, Brother. It's okay, I know." Ed hears the scraping sound of Al's armor and knows his little brother is curling in even more on himself behind him.

"Alphonse…"

"Brother, it's okay. It'll be alright. It's been five years, I don't even remember what it feels like to have a body anymore, so it isn't such a big deal," he gives out a humorless laugh which gets distorted in the bowels of his metal armor. Perhaps it's an attempt at a twisted joke, but it only makes Ed sadder. "I'm just worried about your arm and leg."

_Oh Alphonse._

"We'll find a way," Ed repeats, trying to muster any conviction he can into his voice. He looks up, extending his arm to the ceiling and covering the spinning fan with his automail hand. "We'll find a way, we'll break the cycle. Just a little longer, Al. I promise."

And if they don't? Well, then they'll just have to learn to be okay this way.

They have nothing more to go on other than hope, so they have to believe in it.

Perhaps this is God's special way of torturing people who commit the taboo. There is nothing more torturous than an endless game of cat and mouse, an infinite search for a fix that doesn't even exist. Every lead that has fallen through the grates of the gutter has been just another dead end to lament upon. All of the dead ends of the past have hurt like walking on broken glass, so terrible and cutting, but somehow this one is even worse. They were so unbelievably close, they felt the sands of the secret fall between their fingers, hell, they even found out the secret to creating the Philosopher's Stone once and for all, the secret to getting Al his body back, but it's too terrible to ever go through with. They're standing here, looking at everything they ever searched for, but they can never go near.

Ed wants to scream.

It's moments like these, in the dusky darkness of the room with only the white noise to keep him company that Ed's fears come trickling back into his mind like a tributary. His fears are always there, he cannot outrun them, but sometimes he can put a bit of distance between himself and them for a little while and it helps briefly.

But now they come crawling, creeping in like spiders in the winter and Ed wishes more than anything they would go.

He thinks of the night after his port installation surgery, so delirious that he hardly remembers any of it at all, but he can recall that one conversation with Winry and Granny punctuated with sobs. He was so scared—he is _still_ scared that Al hates him for what he did to him, for the hell he condemned his little brother to.

Sometimes he can put those thoughts behind him. Al cares too much, he's always there taking care of him, making sure he eats and sleeps and he protects him. There's no way a brother who acts so good could hate him.

Other times he thinks about how there's no way Al _couldn't_ hate him after everything that happened. After all the false leads, all the promises fallen, after what he did. He's really shocked Al hasn't up and abandoned him already.

Ed rubs a hand over his pained face and closes his eyes.

"Al?" Ed asks, keeping his eyes closed and listening to the creaks of his brother's armor as he lifts his head up.

"Yeah, Brother?"

"There's something I've been meaning to ask you. For a while now actually."

Ed wonders if it is courage that has finally gotten him to ask the question to his little brother that he has stewed on for so long. He thinks maybe it is failure instead, defeat in another letdown and the fact that their scraping along the bottom with nothing left to lose that does it.

"Of course," Al says, and there's something so childishly hopeful in his voice, like he's waiting for Ed to finally give him a piece of good news in the middle of this storm of bad, that breaks Ed's heart.

He can't ask his brother if he hates him, he can't put that all out there now. He can't hurt Al even further when everything they've been grasping at for years has just been torn away.

"It's nothing, never mind. Sorry."

"Are you sure?" Al asks.

"Yeah, sorry for bothering you."

Ed goes back to looking up at the fan, letting his mind wander back into that place of shame and doubt, and waits.

**.oOo.**

"Of course you boys are staying with me tonight, I'm not going to let you two go waste your money on some lousy hotel when my family lives so close," Hughes says, shoving his photographs of his daughter and wife back into his wallet and guiding them out the door.

"But Mr. Hughes—" Al begins to protest.

"We only have one bed in our guest room though, so one of you will have to sleep on the sofa in the living room if that's alright. And of course, my precious wife Gracia will cook us something fabulous for dinner. She makes the best meals; you two should see her on Solstice when her family comes over and they all prepare dishes for the holiday. It's really something spectacular!"

He carries on but Al tunes him out. He likes Lieutenant Colonel Hughes, he really does, but sometimes he can be more than Al is equipped to handle.

Brother clearly thinks so too if anything can be told by the way he scrunched up his nose.

The Hugheses' house is nice. It's beautiful even, everything Alphonse would have thought of when imagining such a picture-perfect little family like the ones Hughes always describes. The front door to their apartment is a dark shade of forest green, shiny and unchipped like it has been painted recently. The gold placard with their apartment number gleams in the fluorescent lighting of the hallway and reflects like a mirror. It all seems too good to be true.

Just like the Tucker residency not too long ago.

Al doesn't mistrust Hughes. Of course, he didn't mistrust Tucker either, but he was never his biggest fan either. Hughes, though, is the complete opposite of Tucker in every way imaginable. He's full of energy and so involved with his family, he cherishes them like they hung the very stars in the sky. Tucker on the other hand cared so very little about his family, little enough to play with their lives in his fucked-up game of alchemy.

When Mrs. Hughes opens the door and lets the trio in, there's a moment where Al has to stop and get his bearing about him. Everything in the sweet little apartment is just so perfect. The look of it so inviting and warm that he can almost feel the heat that radiates from the kitchen and into the living room. He can almost smell the scent of vanilla and home cooking lingering in the air. He can almost taste the sweetness on his tongue.

It's almost _almost _like home.

The Elric brothers meet the Hughes family for the first time, though they already know far too much about them from Hughes obsessive ramblings and showcases photographs of them around the office. There's something so pink and perfect about them that it feels like vicious mockery to Al.

_This is what you could have had, _the scene screams, _but this is what you _don't _have._

Everything about them is so pristine, so nuclear. It makes his and Ed's little two-person makeshift family look even more broken.

Standing here in their living room, plush-looking carpet pushing up around his metal feet, Al feels like such an intruder in this place. There's the cream, laced tablecloth folded crisply around the edges of the breakfast room table and the fragile lilacs sitting in delicate vases and he feels like he's an abomination whose been dropped into Winry's old dollhouse. He feels like he's a movie monster whose stumbled onto a family sitcom set by accident.

Al appreciates the Hugheses and the support they show by taking them in and encouraging them without really knowing any of what they're doing, though. He feels out of place as he sits at the dinner table in a fifth chair they've pulled up just for him and pokes around at the roast Gracia made with his fork, trying to make it look like he's eaten something. He wants to hide, but he just continues pushing around his food and speaking amicably.

When no one is looking, he swaps plates with Ed who has scarfed down his meal in a matter of second. It's obvious, but Alphonse for now is willing to exploit the fact that the Hugheses are just too kind to ask about it. It's cruel, but it works.

When dinner is done the Hugheses sit around in the living room while the boys play with little Elysia on the rug by the fireplace. She's a little spitfire, so full of spice and sass and she doesn't take no for an answer. She's adamant they play trains with her and she loves using Al's back as what she's dubbed as the "train slide".

It's not until Al accidentally sits on one of the trains and crushes it that things go haywire.

"You broke it!" she sobs, fat tears rolling down her cheeks.  
"Now, Elysia, honey, I'm sure it was only an accident." Hughes scoops his darling girl into his arms, petting back her hair as she soaks his sleeves with tears. "And look, you have plenty of other trains to play with, one broken one isn't going to hurt."

"But Daddy it was my favorite!"

"Uh—" Al starts, reaching out a bit nervously, not wanting to make little Elysia cry any harder, but also trying to get her attention. "I can fix the train if you want me to. I know how."

Really he's just grateful she's crying over the smashed wreckage of the little toy train and not screaming and crying because she's scared of the big, metal monster like most little kids do when he comes near them. Broken toys though, those are easy.

Elysia sniffles and clutches the broken pieces even closer to her chest. "No, you can't fix it, you'll just break it some more!"

"I promise I won't," Al tries to assure her, but she won't budge.

"Yeah, Al's great at fixing things," Ed chimes in.

Elysia looks up between her father and mother, looking for confirmation, and they urge her to go on and let him fix it.

"Okay," he starts when she offers the broken pieces forward. He pulls his notebook and a pencil out from the pouch strapped across his right cuisse. "First I have to draw the circle," he takes a better look at the wooden pieces of the train in her small hands and then begins to draw out the perfect circle on one of the empty pages of the notebook. "Great, now all you have to do is put the train in the middle of the circle and I can fix it for you. Does that sound alright?"

She does what he says and puts the train right where he told her too.

With his thick, leather gauntlets, Al presses both his hands down on either side of the circle and blue lights crackle. Energy surges up around the circle, engulfing the little train in its brilliance and the train, like magic, mends itself back together before their very eyes.

Elysia gasps when she sees the train sitting whole in the middle of the circle. "Magic!" she cries out, reaching for the train and inspecting it with wide, curious eyes.

Alphonse laughs. "Not really. It's alchemy, actually."

"Magic!" she repeats, still mystified, spinning the little train around and around.

Al inwardly beams.

**.oOo.**

It's hard to lie to someone completely when you're staying at their house for the night. Al knows that Gracia and Maes Hughes have already picked up on some of his oddities after his hasty plate switching with Ed or the way they sat signing to each other in the living room while Hughes put little Elysia to bed. Al gets it, whatever the Hugheses were expecting of them, it probably wasn't this broken, little mess, but it's still nice that they don't ask too many questions or try to find a deeper meaning in their idiosyncrasies. They just accept the Elric brothers for what they are.

It's nice, and Al is grateful for it. It makes him feel like he's a part of something bigger than himself, someone more important than just a suit of armor.

After Elysia goes to bed, Ed retires to the guest room, leaving Al the couch to pretend to sleep on so the Hugheses won't expect a thing. Across it, Al lies on his back and looks up at the ceiling and counts the lines of the spiderwebbing texture on the drywall.

Hughes shuffles into the room, his blue robe on and Al's head turns to the side to watch him.

"Wow, kiddo, I knew you were attached to the suit of armor, but I didn't think enough to actually sleep in it. I'm sure that can't be comfortable."

Al lets out a nervous laugh, wondering why Hughes is even up when it's almost two in the morning. "Well, it's for my alchemy training, so I can't take it off. Not even to sleep, so…"

Al wonders if he disappointed the Lieutenant Colonel, if just perhaps he had lingered in here so late under the assumption that Al would be asleep without the armor, if he could catch a glimpse of the boy beneath.

Hughes smiles, walking into the kitchen and watching Al from over the half wall that divides the two rooms. "That's funny. Your brother said it was _just a hobby_."

_ Oh fuck. _He's been caught red-handed.

"That's what he said, huh?"

"Yep."

Al doesn't say anything back. Hughes knows he's lying through the teeth, so he'll only make himself look worse if he tries to cover his tracks. Hughes _does _work in investigations after all, so it's a given that things wouldn't slip past him so easily. Al feels bad for taking advantage of his kindness and hospitality and then turning around and stabbing him back for it.

Does he have another choice though? The truth would be even worse.

Hughes meanders back into the living room, motioning for Al to sit up and then plopping down beside him on the couch, coffee mug in hand.

"You're up awfully late," Al comments, trying to keep the silence from receding too far back into awkwardness.

"I could say the same about you."

"Yeah," Al breathes out, his helmet tipping away. "I guess you could."

"Alphonse," Hughes starts, and Al turns back to face him. There's that same look in his eyes, the one he sometimes sees in Winry's or Granny's. It's a look he's come to associate with sympathy or even pity, things he doesn't want from anyone. He's locked himself into this cage and it isn't anyone else's duty to set him free. That gleam though, the empathy, is so strong that Al wants to turn away again.

"I know it isn't any of my business, what happened to the two of you, but just know I'm always here for you. Gracia and I both are. So if you need anything, or just someone to talk to, we'll be here whenever you need us. I'm serious, Al. Don't hesitate to talk to us."

"I won't."

He's never been offered anything like this. Usually people who suspect anything wrong with him turn away because of his looks or don't even know where to start, but Mr. Hughes is different. He's kind in a way Al's never seen before.

Hope starts to grow in Al a little more, the flower sputtering up and its petals blossoming. Things can be better, good even.

"That's good to hear," Mr. Hughes yawns, standing up, his knees popping as he rises.

He's almost to the door when Al calls out to him, afraid if he doesn't capitalize on the moment now then the courage will be gone forever. This isn't a chance he gets often, one he's afraid he won't get again if he lets it slip out through his fingers and lets Mr. Hughes walk away.

"Mr. Hughes," Al calls, still trying to keep his voice somewhat low so that the other sleeping residents of the house won't be awoken from their slumbers. "I was deaf."

He isn't sure why he said that, all of the sudden cursing himself after it spilled out. That wasn't what he was planning on saying at all, and though he didn't actually have anything _planned _out per se, he was hoping for a nice 'I'd like to talk now' or something similar.

Mr. Hughes slowly takes his hand away from the brass doorknob and turns around, walking back over to Al who still rests on the couch.

For a long time, Al simply sits there and it all spills out of him. Every secret part of himself that he's learned to bury deep inside in the presence of others, the feelings of confliction and restlessness that so constantly plague him, the taboo and his childhood of silence, all of it comes forward. Once he's started, he can't seem to stop.

Al tells Hughes things he's kept secret even from Brother and Winry. Things about how much it hurts to not be able to feel, to lay awake at night, his mind endlessly wandering. It's easier here, with someone who he knows these things can't directly impact.

He's never complained to Ed about how much this existence hurts. He can't, can't do that to his brother who already blames himself far too much. Al's had to keep silent about it for so long.

He's gone so long keeping all of this buried deep down, building up pressure inside of him, that once it spills out to Hughes Al immediately wonders how he did it for so long.

When he's done talking for what feels like hours, Al is simultaneously drained entirely and wide awake. He's exhausted from putting so much of his vulnerability out on display for the world to see, but there's such a nice relief that accompanies it. It feels like an invisible weight has been carried away from him nowNo longer does he have to live in the secrecy he has shrouded himself in like a security blanket.

For all that it's worth, at least one other person right outside his very limited number of people he keeps close contact with knows him for who he truly is. Hughes knows he has no body, that he hasn't ears that function as they should. Here he is Alphonse Elric, the real Alphonse Elric, and only that.

He finishes his monologue with an apology the way he always does. In however long it took him to tell Hughes his life story, which to Al felt like hours really, Hughes never once interrupted or stopped Al to comment on something. He sat there on the couch, eyes alert with his knees pointing to Al in show that he was paying attention.

"I'm glad you told me," Hughes says with a smile, placing a hand on Al's shoulder in a display of goodwill and Al gives out a little, involuntary gasp. People don't usually touch him, not even those who are close to him. Even Ed doesn't show him the kind of affection he so desperately seeks (despite not being able to feel anything) other than the occasional punch to the metal shoulder or a pat to the head when he's proud of Al, but Hughes doesn't hesitate here.

"So you're not—" _mad? angry?_ "Disappointed?"

"Disappointed? Why would I be disappointed?"

"I don't know. I just thought that if you knew you would think worse of me. That if I told you then you would treat me differently and I didn't want to lose your kindness. I'm sorry for lying to you."

Hughes sighs. "I'm not disappointed in you, Al, and don't worry, you don't need to apologize for anything either. You didn't lie to me anyway. And besides, I'm not going to think any less of you because of who you are, in fact I'll only view you as better because you were brave enough to tell me. Is that why you never told anyone any of this—because you thought they would think worse of you?"

"Something like that."

In all sincerity, Al was never sure what he thought would happen. He's never contemplated letting the secret out, so he'd never gotten as far as worrying how people would react to his truth. He's glad to see it didn't ruin things with Hughes.

"Al," Hughes says. "I don't think people would see you that way. If they're worth caring about then they would love you just the same, if not more."

The sun starts to peek over the city skyline and Hughes resorts to getting more coffee instead of returning back to bed and Al apologizes for keeping him.

"Don't worry about it," says Hughes from the kitchen, standing over the counter and stirring cream into his coffee.

And for the first time in a long time, Al decides to take that advice. He's not going to worry about it. He's got the warmth of hope rising in him like the sunrise behind him and he's going to be content with himself for a while.

**.oOo.**

Through a long series of twists and turns and breaches in the Amestrian government records and patterns on the map, Edward and Alphonse find themselves at the supposedly empty Laboratory Five.

They hop the chain link fence that surrounds the complex and find themselves inside unlit grounds that creak and groan like they're anything but empty. Al feels bad that they ditched their bodyguards, Maria Ross and Denny Brosh, back at headquarters, but not too bad. Not bad enough to turn back and not go through with it.

They have to know. They have to know if what has been hidden away is true, if the raw materials for the Philosopher's Stone were really gathered here and if the Stone was really made. They can't just sit by idly and let it happen now that they know, especially if it's a research project that's still going on.

Al's had enough experience with human's dealing cards in the lives of others, he'll put a stop to anymore of that however he can.

The only entrance in, the only entrance that isn't them creating a giant hole in the wall with their alchemy like Ed proposed, is for Ed to crawl through the airducts and sneak inside and scope the place out. Al doesn't want Ed to go alone, they work best as a team and Al has no idea what surprises Ed could find on the inside, but Ed repeatedly assures him that it's all going to be fine.

All Al has to do is sit outside in the dark and watch for anyone coming. The mission is easy, the fifth laboratory is supposed to be abandoned so there _shouldn't _be anyone in there.

From his first impression of the place, Al would say that the intel that the laboratory is no longer in use is somewhat valid. There are no lights shining on the building and the grass inside the fence is long and overgrown. There're no signs of upkeep here, it looks as empty as can be, but maybe that's the point.

If someone wanted to keep intruders from entering and snooping around like they're planning to do now, then it would be best to keep the place looking as dilapidated as possible.

Al takes a close look at the moon up above head. It's only a sliver tonight. Waning, one of his star charts once told him. That means tomorrow there'll probably be no moon at all for him to inspect.

The first sound that Al hears while sitting under the air duct that Brother crawled through sounds just like the wind, and Al doesn't think much of it. It's just a little rustling here and there, but slowly the sound grows louder and louder and more consistent.

Something is coming near.

Al jumps up and spreads his legs, moving his hands into a fighting stance, ready for the oncoming intruder.

The stranger comes with no hesitation, swinging a sword and what seems to be a butcher's knife rapidly at Al as he springs out of the way. The man is fast, his movements sharp and the blades of his weapons sparkle in the light that shines down from the moon.

His clothing—or body—whichever it is, Al doesn't have a great view of him since he's moving so much and the night is rather dark, also shines.

"Who are you?" Alphonse calls, leaping back again and spinning with a kick as the knife collides with his foot.

"Me?" the man crackles, laughing like a maniac, his shrill voice way too amused for the current situation. There's something in the way he speaks, the way his voice echoes like it's being swallowed by a vacuum, that is familiar to Al. "I'm number Sixty-Six, or that's the name the people gave me here, though it isn't very flattering."

"What people here? Who do you work for?"

"Wouldn't _you_ like to know."

Al just rolls his soulfire eyes as the man swings, bringing his butcher's knife in a wide arch.

The man stops. In the light he reminds Al of the barbarian from Yock Island. He's big, not as big as Al is, but he's still fairly large. He wears a mask like the dried-out skull of a large bull that's been casted out under the desert sun and then dropped in as a replacement for his face. Like Al, the knife-wielding stranger wears something of a suit of armor, though there's a much different aesthetic taking place with his. He actually wears some kind of outfit, like a hide tied across his chest and reaches down to about his knees. There's a long patch of full like hair that comes from his mask and trails down his back like the mockery of hair.

This man looks as feral as he sounds.

"I'm glad to find someone out here, we don't get many visitors around here. People like you make my job interesting, though."

That means there are others that have fallen into the same trap and probably fallen prey to this man. Who knows how many others there are guarding this place that Al doesn't even know of.

_Oh Edward, _Alphonse thinks. He hopes his brother hasn't run into the same kind of trouble as he has now, but if number Sixty-Six is worth trusting, then there are people inside running this place which Brother is surely to come across when looking for truth to what Marcoh transcribed.

"Now," Sixty-Six takes a step forward, "I'm going to chop you up into little pieces."

If he's really just going to stand here and monologue, then Al's going to swoop in a make a move. He doesn't have all night to just wait around and listen to this man babble about how he's going to do this or that or whatever.

Al darts over to him with a leap and punches Number Sixty-Six right in the face, sending him flying backwards across the grounds.

"Fuck you," Sixty-Six spits, picking himself up off the ground unnaturally fast and charging at Al again.

Unlike Sixty-Six, Al likes to think he has a little more class than just mindless charging and fighting and he's already noticed a weakness to Sixty-Six's fighting style, if such spontaneous action can even be call that.

Sixty-Six takes the butcher's knife and reels his arm back, ready to release into a too-wide swing that leave him open, and Al takes his chance.

This punch to the face though, rather than sending all of Sixty-Six backwards in another fall, only knocks his helmet off.

Al gasps.

"You're—you're empty!" Al point. _Just like me_, he doesn't add.

The man, though, doesn't wilt back like Al would have after being found out, he just casually reaches for his helmet on the ground a places it back on his head like the whole ordeal is really just one more inconvenience for him.

"There's a story for that, and interesting one too, though I'm sure you must already know some of it."

He goes on a long tirade about a butcher in Central called Barry the Chopper. The butcher, of course, is him while he was still living. Barry was more than a butcher of meats and animals, those things were good in the beginning, but Barry had an insatiable hunger to cut things up, and so when he finally grew bored of his work, he turned to cutting up people for sport.

Al knows that while Sixty-Six—or Barry the Chopper, rather—revels in his own past achievements, Al should take his chance and take the man down while he isn't paying attention, but he can't. Al hangs onto every word of his like it's the only thing that's keeping him alive. He has to know what Barry did to end up with the same fate as he did.

There's never been another, as far as Al knows, just like him, but now there is. And though this man is out of his mind and probably deranged and also bent on chopping into a million tiny pieces, there's something nice about knowing he isn't the only one in the world without a body.

Even if he's the only _sane _one.

"Surely you've heard of me," Barry ends in a flourish. "I did chop up twenty-three people before I was caught and hanged. I've heard I'm quite the legend around Central."

"I'm afraid I haven't heard of you. Sorry."

Barry sputters. "You haven't heard of me? Do you live under a rock? Everyone in Central has heard of me!"

"Well I'm afraid _I _haven't."

Barry scoffs. "Well then, I guess now you have. Too bad you'll die before you ever have the chance to tell others about my legacy."

"So if you were hung for your crimes, then how come you're still alive?"

Al looks at Barry closely. He definitely wouldn't take him for the kind of man that would know any alchemy, especially not well enough to bind a soul to a suit of armor. Not even Alphonse knows how his brother did that one, and Ed's never seem too keen on sharing his secrets.

That means there was someone else here involved in making him into this. Someone who knew exactly what they were doing when they bound one of Central's top serial killers to a suit of armor and then taught him to play guard dog around an "abandoned complex".

"Aren't you going to ask me how I came to be this way? Aren't you going to cower in fear at the realization that I have no body, that you're fighting a haunted suit of armor?"

Al pulls of his helmet, relieving his emptiness.

Barry screams. "What happened to your body!" he shrieks, pointing to Al's emptiness. "You freak!"

Al's never felt the urge to roll his eyes more than now when talking to this man.

Barry reaches down and picks his blade up from off the grass, turning back to Al. "Well, you must be an inmate like me."

"Rude! I'm not criminal!" Al says, his metallic voice taking the defensive. How dare this man suggest such a thing!

"It was my brother," Al continues, and they begin to fight again, spinning around each other with sparks of clashing metal flying around them like magic. Barry doesn't fight with any kind of grace, not like Al does. His fighting's gritty and dirty, but it's sure effective.

Al catches the breath he doesn't have. "It was my brother who put me in this suit of armor. He did it to save my life, and I am ever grateful to him for it."

"Brother, huh?"

Something about the atmosphere around them in that moment changes. The fight has always been serious, been something to care about, but that's harder when there isn't too much on the line. Barry can swing at him as much as he wants, but Al won't slow unless something were to happen the blood seal on the inside of his back plate. The fight is like a game of pretend between two children, nothing truly at stake.

But it's becoming different now. The air grows stiff between them and it's like a sharp static electricity radiates out from Barry, his soulfire eyes narrowing in concentration.

"I guess you trust your brother very much then?" Barry questions, coming up with the butcher's knife, swinging it towards Al's chest.

At the mention of his brother Al swells up with pride. "Well of course I trust my brother! He's done everything for me, he gave me this life at the risk of his own."

Barry clearly mocks being moved by such a sentiment and Al wants to scowl at him. "What brotherly love!" He says, a giggle in his voice before it takes on a lower note. "Too bad that love isn't real."

That manages to catch Al off guard and he almost trips over his own feet, catching himself right before he falls on his face.

"What—what do you mean _isn't real_?"

Barry swings his knife around in circles. The blade gleams in the moonlight, reflecting its rays in endless spirals. "How can you truly know that you two are actually brothers? What proof do you have?"

Really? Al doesn't have time for this, of course he and Ed are brothers! "Well, for starters," Al says, giving into Barry's little game anyway. "We look exactly alike! We both have the same blond hair and gold-colored eyes! And we both gets freckles in the summer! Though, our personalities are way different, at least according to most people, but I think there are more similarities than people realize. I mean, yeah, he's brash and bold and doesn't think for he walks into a fight and I'm a little more—"

"Is that all the proof you have? The similarities between you and your brother based off the likeness of a body you don't even have?"

A body he doesn't have…

He's right. There aren't any way people would be able to tell he and Ed were related now that he is made of metal. Unless they didn't tell people as often as they do, how could anyone guess?

When they were little, they used to get mistake for twins all the time. Perhaps it was their closeness, their reliance on each other to be their brothers' voice. It used to be so clear to people that they were so obviously related, mistaken for the other all the time.

Now, the only person he's ever mistake for is the Fullmetal Alchemist, not because he and Brother look so similar as it would suggest, but simply because he fits the fearsome description.

His anxiety must be clear to Barry, as Al's balance becomes wearier and his fighting more erratic and stumbled.

Barry lets out a long, hollow laugh without mercy.

"See, you can't truly know. You know that I'm right!"

"No—" Al's voice wobbles like it did in the those first days he was learning to speak.

"How can you truly be certain that he's your brother? How can you be certain about anything when you're only an empty suit of armor?"

No. No. Al doesn't want to hear any more of this. He can't, he can't take this any longer.

"How can you even be certain you're real at all?"

Silence falls heavy like a hammer, and the fighting seizes altogether.

Still, Barry the Chopper keeps going. "For all you know, you could be nothing more than a series of false memories and a false personality fabricated and stitched together by your so called brother?"

"No, that's not true," But Al's voice has lost the conviction it once had. "I'm a real person, I'm Alphonse Elric."

"Alphonse Elric, huh? How can you _really _know that you are? A soul is not something real, something tangible that you can believe in. Right now I see no _Alphonse Elric_, I only see you, an empty suit of armor who _wishes _he is Alphonse Elric."

Al feels like if this were all real, if he had a voice and a breath that was truly his, right now he would be breathing hard, gasping out with pleading denial.

But that isn't something he has. He doesn't have that luxury, and he doesn't have the proof to change Barry's mind. The closest he does have is his blood seal, but even then that wouldn't mean anything to him at all.

Still, it can't be true. He has to believe in Ed. If he turns astray now, then there's no telling what will happen. He can't forget the sacrifice that Ed made for him. He gave up his arm when Al wasn't worth even that, so Al _must _have faith in him.

"Aren't you different now than you were before? Aren't there things that are changed about you now, pieces of you that you brother made better about you? Surely there must be thing he changed about the person you pretend to be."

Made better…

He couldn't have been made better like this. How could anyone think someone like him, someone whose touch only breaks everything around them and skin of silver could be any better than the person Alphonse Elric once was when he was skin and bone?

Al gasps, and that's enough.

The Alphonse Elric before didn't have a voice, he couldn't hear.

And the _Alphonse Elric _he is now? Well, he _can_.

"You know it too; you know that I'm right!"

He's a fake. A fraud. He isn't Alphonse Elric. Alphonse was good and kind and gentle. Alphonse Elric was deaf, but he could hear more than what went beyond those physical vibrations.

But him, the suit of armor with nothing to himself but a red rune of blood, he can't be those things. He—whoever he is—he is someone else.

Barry the Chopper is right.

Alphonse Elric is dead.

He is just a fake, a simulacrum of Alphonse Elric, left lingering inconveniently for his brother's pleasure.

**.oOo.**

Al's been in plenty of hospitals in the middle of the night, but none of them have ever felt like this. Never has he been so finely tuned to the creaking of the air vents, the groaning of the wheels of the gurney. Every little sound like another crack being carved into his heavy, metal skin.

There's something inside of Al that is now broken. Something that isn't what it used to be.

He wants to break something. There's a raging storm building up in his empty chest that screams at him to hit something, to get up and fight, to smash all the windows out like a tornado let loose.

But he doesn't. He doesn't because he isn't strong enough to do those things now.

Al sits in a small dead-ended hallway where the light barely reaches and huddles over in the dark. It feels like something is pulling at his metal skin, stripping it away one layer at a time until he will be nothing but the soul he claims to possess.

Perhaps slowly, now that he knows the truth, he is finally becoming the monster he is meant to be.

That's what everyone is certain that he is, a big, metal monster, so why shouldn't he be? Why does he hold back at all?

Barry the Chopper told him he could be free if he chooses to let the pretense of Alphonse Elric go.

The sun rises and Al doesn't even realize it. Sometimes when he is this still, when his mind is running in so many circles of fear and desperation and has given up hopes, hours can go by without Al even realizing it. He's always been afraid one day he could pull himself out of the endlessly hopeless circles of his mind only to find out that entire centuries have passed.

The hospital wakes with the sun. Nurses rush up and down the hall, people brush past. There is screaming and chattering and cries of death. Every human emotion, those of both extremes, can be captured so effortlessly in hospitals.

So many people running here and there and yet Al remains ignored. No one looks down the hall where he grovels in solitude, no one spares a glance to the behemoth in the dark.

"Al?"

Alphonse looks up and sees his brother in the main hallway, being pushed in a wheelchair by Sargent Brosh.

At the sight of him, hate curdles in Al's imaginary stomach.

"Why are you sitting there all by yourself? Come back to the room with us, Winry's coming soon."

Winry, huh? Al only ever had good things to say about Winry, but he cannot remember a single one of those things right now. She's clearly in on it, Granny is too. They helped Ed deceive him for the past five years. They allowed him to believe he was someone he is not. He loved them and they tricked him.

He doesn't even know who he really is.

It must be clear to Ed the way he feels. Ed, who isn't even his brother, who can feel his every emotion though he can never even tell apart his own.

"Are you okay, Al?" and from the corner of Al's vision he sees Ed's face soften, but Al has no sympathy for him left.

"I'm fine." He tries to keep his voice normal. There's no telling what will happen if Ed figures out that he knows the truth about his existance. "I'll be there soon, just give me a minute."

Al sits there and listens until the squeak of the wheelchair wheels running on the floor disappear before he stands. In the darkness of the unlit hall, there's a line of mirror and sink and Al stands up and peers into one of them.

Since the night of the transmutation, when he walked past the mirror in their house near the door and saw what had become of him for the first time, he's been avoiding all reflective surfaces. He's like a vampire, afraid to look at himself, afraid that they'll show him the image he doesn't want to see.

Because for a long time, he's been filled up so heavily with shame. He found himself worthless, a worthlessness that snaked through his armored limbs and seeped into the blood of his seal. Ed didn't deserve to give up his childhood, didn't deserve to spend the days he should have had to learn and grow fighting and battling all for Al's sake. He spent so long thinking like that.

That's what he used to think anyway.

Now the walls have come down though. He's a fake, a marionette. There's almost a relief to realizing that all this suffering a guilt he's spent the past five years filled with isn't real, a burden lifted to realize that he isn't ruining Ed's life; Ed is ruining his.

Al looks at the sharp angles and lines of his armored face. There are dents in its surface, millions of scratches and cracks along the plates. He's so big, he barely can fit a view of himself in the human-sized mirror above the sink. There's a tremble in his empty shell, one that makes the hate inside of Alphonse grow.

He can't do anything, anything at all. He's stuck like this, stuck in a body that can't feel, can't sleep or cry; can't live.

There's no quest for him to get his body back, that is all a ruse. He's a fake, he knows he is, so what body could there truly be waiting for him like the light at the end of a tunnel? He's been condemned to live out the rest of his infinite lifespan in this senseless limbo. A limbo that belong to a fake boy with a fake body.

Al puts a finger to the mirror, trying to come to terms with the fact that this is who he is, this is who he always was and always will be. Maybe he can find some solace in himself, but Al's finger touches the mirror harder than he realizes and the mirror shatters, webbed cracks spiraling out from the point of impact and reflective piece falling out and into the sink below.

Al turns away and leaves.

**.oOo.**

Alphonse is able to stick it out for a few days. He sits in his _brother's _room, waits for him to heal, and watches the easy conversation between him and Winry with sickening hate and jealousy.

There's something calming about her appearance here. She's never been the mediator between them, the one to make peace (that role typically belonged to Al), but she makes a good buffer between Al completely losing his mind and taking it out on Ed.

In the meantime, Al chooses to stay silent.

He sits against the wall, only giving monosyllabic answers when spoken to, and broods. In his mind he thinks up all the memories he has, the ones from before he was a suit of armor, and realizes he doesn't have many of them.

There are small things, little bits and pieces of events and days from his life, but they are far and few between.

What more, the memories he can recall are distorted. They're clearly changed from what they should be. It's like all the concrete, little details that make a moment so much more than a figment of one's imagination have been erased.

He doesn't remember names of acquaintances, hardly remembers their faces at all. During the second night of his brooding, Al comes to the realization that he can so barely remember _Mom's _face and it hurts him so much.

A moment after he realizes that Mom, his desperation for her and his yearning for her comfort, are just as fake as him. They're just false yearnings created by a false brother who wanted _his _mother back and created a little brother for himself so that he wouldn't have to be alone any longer.

It makes Al almost nauseous.

The other distortion to Al's memory, the one that is the most apparent to him, is that all the memories from his childhood seem to have _sound. _Of course, that can't be right, not when Al was deaf while he made them.

But still, he remembers jumping in the mud at Winry's sixth birthday party and knows that the birds were singing. He remembers their song, but he doesn't remember the feeling of the mud oozing up between his toes.

_Fake,_ his mind scream, _you remember the sounds because your memories are fake._

It must have been an oversight when Ed created him. He must have forgotten that Al's memories would also have to be silent.

Ed created him to be dependent on him. That's why he was deaf before the armor, according to everyone around him. Al relying on Ed for all forms of communication already set the precedent for Al's utter dependency on Ed so it gave him no reason to question the validity of anything Ed ever told him. He's been strategically crafted to be loyal to a fault.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

Eventually, all of Al's frustrated silence and the storm brewing inside of him like a kettle comes to a steeping point. It's like the kettle's whistle has turned into a shriek and Al can't take it anymore. He can't sit here and listen to Edward and Winry argue as if nothing is wrong. He can't sit here in feigned ignorance like he doesn't feel the need to stand up and strangle his so-called brother for bringing him into this miserable existence.

Of course it's a stupid glass of milk that sets it off. If Al _does_ remember anything, it's all those undrinken glasses of milk that Al would always drink for his older brother.

"You know," Ed starts, running his index finger around the rim of the full glass still on his empty tray, filling the stale air with staler words. "I don't think I'll ever like milk."

Al swears he's going to kill him. All his thoughts and feelings of rage are bottling up inside of him like that bottle of milk Ed holds on his tray. He's shoving all his thoughts, all his frustrations inside and sooner or later (but probably sooner) it's going to explode under all that pressure.

Al let's out a sigh. "It really doesn't matter if you like the milk or not, Ed," Al says, not even having to think as the words come. He's repeated this a million times over for his milk-hating _brother_. "You have a real, human body that requires nourishment, so just drink it."

For a moment the room grows silent, emotionally cold again, only the whirling of the fan audible in the silence and Al wonders who left them here alone together. Never once have they been awkward together and now Al can feel the space filling up with static between them, every hair standing on end. Something inside of him that once allowed him to tolerate his brother's idiotic behavior has broken and suddenly he has no fortitude left for such attitude.

"You know," Ed starts and Al can already feel the stale air trapped in his chest starting to heat up, knowing this will be the statement that ends his kindness and forces him the lunge. "I wish I were like you Al," there's such wistfulness in his voice, "then I would never have to drink milk ever again."

Al stands with such a clatter of commotion, his steel plates banging together and the stool he sat on crashing to the floor as he stands so that they don't hear Winry open the door.

"It's not like I asked for this body, Brother!" Al yells, raising his voice in a way he never has before.

Al isn't easy to anger, but once he has been set off there's no turning back. He's a different breed of ruthless that makes him so much more dangerous than Ed's boisterous raucity. Still, he's never had the pleasure of yelling before, yelling _at_ someone. He's never had the cause, but now Al finds it in himself like his voice has been waiting to serve such a purpose for _years._ It makes him wonder how he didn't break earlier on. Usually his fury is a quiet, sterile thing. Never this.

Ed turns his face sharply down, adverting his eyes from his looming brother. "Al—Al, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, it was wrong of me to—I'm sorry. It's my fault anyway. Listen, I promise though, I _will_ get you your body back and—"

"No, _Brother, _you listen to _me_!It is my turn to speak now, _my _chance!" Al looks down at his brother who sits shrinking beneath him on his spot on the bed. His voice may still be childish from the five years he's missed of his puberty, may be tinny and hollow and still laced with that stupid accent from not speaking for so long that he still can't seem to shake, but despite all that it _is_ still a voice that commands, a voice that is capable of directing the mountains and the sea. "You promise you'll me get my body back, but it never happens! I've waited so long, so _fucking _long, to be normal again and nothing ever happens! I'm tired of this, Ed! I'm tired of always having my hope broken over all your stupid, empty promises!"

"Al, I swear to you I will get you your body back. Believe me, I—"

"_Believe you_?" Al spits with such ferocity. "How can I believe you about anything? You always say that but how can you be sure?"

"Al, look, I promise I will." Ed's voice is still somber, still trying to be gentle and tip toe between all the strands of caution tape Al has laid out and it only infuriates Al further. "Believe me, I will."

"How can I believe you—or anything—when I'm stuck in this body? What am I to believe in anyway? My memories? Memories are just little scraps of information, little pieces of data throughout our brains. They could be made up just as easily as anything!"

Ed's eyes grow wide and Al finds some satisfaction in that.

"Al, what—what are you talking about?" and that little stutter in Ed's voice confirms everything Al needs to know. He's got Ed scared now that he's putting the truth out there on the table for the world to see. His sin forever grows.

"There was something—something you wanted to tell me. Back when we were decoding Marcoh's notes you said there was something you wanted me to know. I think I know what that is now." Al's voice wobbles with emotion and turns distorted all funny-like, the same way he has come to associate with a person's voice before they cry and he wonders why it's happening to him. He isn't going to cry, he can't cry, and he's trying to be strong so he can stick it to Ed once and for all, but his voice still breaks.

"You wanted to tell me that that my soul and my memories are artificial constructions you created, didn't you?" His hands shake so hard he has to clasp them together in front of him to get them to stop. "You and Granny and Winry—you three have been conspiring together against me and lying to me for years. Haven't you?" Al lets his eyes meet his brother's.

Ed says nothing.

"Well, that's the truth, isn't it?"

There's a clatter as Ed slams his fists, both metal and flesh, on the wood of the tray table and the bottle of milk that started this whole thing goes clattering to the ground, glass and milk breaking and spilling out everywhere.

"Is that what you really think, Alphonse?" Ed glowers. "Have you truly believed this all this time?" There's so much hurt in his voice that it takes Al aback, takes him a moment to remember _he _is the one who is angry here.

"Is that all you have to say for yourself?" Ed says but Al is rendered speechless. He wants to go on more, go off on his brother about how he fucked up his life, how he created this tortured existence for him in some sick game.

But he can't. His voice has been temporarily stricken from him and like the days of his early childhood, Al cannot say a word.

"Okay then," the wheels of the tray table squeal as Ed pushes the tray table out from in front of him and stands. Taking all the time in the world, he slips his slippers on one by one and leaves the room, walking out in front of Alphonse and Winry who waits shocked in the doorway.

As quickly as the fight began, it is over and Ed is gone.

Al expects to feel relieved after getting all that off his chest, after accusing his brother of his hidden sins and finally holding him accountable, but now that it is over Al feels more empty than ever (and that's saying a lot considering).

Once again, the air grows still and quiet, silent all except for the white noise of the endlessly cycling fan.

There is a clang as Al falls backwards from a sudden force, his vision distorting as his helmet rolls off under the bed.

"You moron!" A voice loaded with emotions screams. Al looks up and sees Winry standing there above him, her arms crossed in front of her chest and her face red with anger. Suddenly Al understands that she must have overheard the entire conversation that just took place here. Instantly regret blooms inside of him like wildflowers.

Al sits, trying to reach for his head, ignoring the wrench lying on the floor beside him.

"How could you!"

"I—" Al's voice stutters, trying to come up with any kind of excuse that will appease her fury and ending up empty handed.

"You're a real dummy, you know that, right? You shouldn't have—" and then the tears begin to fall, dribbling down her face and dropping from her chin all too quickly.

Tears, of course, rightfully set Al into panic mode and sudden he's up, hovering all about her, trying to get her to calm down and to stop crying. All of his anger from a moment ago when he accused Ed is gone, instead replaced with concern for his crying best friend.

As he comes close though, Winry only hits him again, knocking him to the ground.

"You're such an idiot, Al! Do you even have any idea how Ed actually feels?" She pauses for an answer, but when Al clearly has none she sinks down the floor in front of him, holding her head in her hands.

"What he was going to ask you—he wanted to know if you blamed him. He thought you hated him for what had happened—" She sobs again and looks up, wiping away the tears with the back of her hand.

"I didn't know," is all Al can pathetically mumble out, but he can already hear how weak those words sound from him.

Winry looks him in the eye and begins to talk. She tells him about the night of his port installation surgery, the night Ed was so overcome with pain that they were certain he would pass out from it all. He never did though.

She tells him about how she remembers Ed crying, she and Granny still seeing his tears despite the cloth laid over his eyes. His regret, his shame.

He didn't cry because of the surgery, that much was clear. It was only when it was over, when the pain killers had set in and destroyed the guard he had built up around him and as a result left him vulnerable, that he had wept.

He had shaken as he spoke. "It's all my fault, it's all my fault," he had shuttered over and over like a hymn. "Al's body is gone and it's all my fault. He can't eat, he can't sleep, he can't feel, he can't cry. He can't do any of those things because of what I did to him. I told him I would always protect him because he's my little brother, I promised Mom I would. I failed; I took everything away from him. Surely, he hates me now. How could he ever forgive me for what I've done?"

Granny had given Ed a somber look and took the pipe from between her teeth. She was not warm like a mother, didn't stroke their hair and rock them back to sleep when they woke from nightmares, but that didn't mean she cared any less. She was there for them constantly, always supporting them, just in less obvious ways.

"I'm sure he doesn't hate you, Ed. Al isn't the type of boy to resent you." She sighed seeing that Ed didn't believe her. "How about you just ask him."

"No. No, I can't" Ed moaned. "I'm too afraid of what he'll say."

Winry begins hitting Al again repeatedly with her wrench as if she's trying to light a match against him as she finishes up the memory.

"Don't you see, Al? You're brother loves you and what you did—that wasn't right."

Regret swirls somewhere inside of Al. Not only regret about what he did to Ed, but regret of all they put Winry through that year after the transmutation. He was so selfish then, thinking of Winry as someone to hold his hand and guide him through the path of rocky waters. She was dealing with both his and Ed's unstable, emotional baggage as well as her own and he didn't even once stop and think about that. He took her friendship and kindness for granted.

And now he's just accused her of conspiring against him all these year, knowing he was a fake and never telling him.

What has he done?

It's starting to become clear just how stupid all of his fears and frustrations now sound. How weakly the foundation of this fake-being story is founded upon.

All the things he feels inside of him, the hurt and regret he feels now, all of those things feel so real. There's no way life can be fake when every feeling, everything that makes life worth living, feel all too strongly to him.

He's felt joy and pain and sorrow and elation too many times before for the world to be nothing more than a dream.

Winry's right. He really is an idiot.

"Winry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said all those things."

"Don't tell me," she sniffles. "Go find Ed and tell _him. _He's the one you should really be apologizing to."

Panic startles up in him. He knows he needs to apologize, but the wound is still too freshly cut.

They've fought before, even since the transmutation, but they usually didn't end with an apology. Usually the anger just faded and they went back not normal, never again bringing up the hurt the fight might have caused.

"All you two have is each other, so go! Go tell him you're sorry. Go!" she yells, hitting him again with her wrench. "Go find him and tell him you're sorry!"

Alphonse stands with a startling clatter. He's out the door before she can hit him again, racing to find his brother.

**.oOo.**

Ed isn't on the roof alone for very long before Al comes spilling out from the stairwell door. He watches the city bustle and move below from the railing, listening to the hanging linens snap and wave on the line behind him.

They remind him of Mom, those linens, and how the three of them (he, Mom, and Al) used to chase each other through the maze of sheets and clothes she hung on the line each Sunday morning.

They were really living through the best of days back then, even if they didn't realize it yet. You always think life can always go up, that things will progressively get better, but such an optimism lacks an appreciation for the present. There are things left unthanked and an unworshiped that really should be.

The door behind him creeps open and Ed can hear the clunks of each of Al's footsteps as he steps out onto the roof.

"Brother—" he starts as he begins to head in Ed's direction.

"Alphonse," Ed interrupts, turning around to face his brother who stands across the roof. It's so quiet up here, pardon the whipping linens, that they don't have to speak up too loud to be heard. Here the eyes of the world are cast away and it's just them. "We haven't sparred in a while and with all this hospital food I'm starting to get out of shape, so let's fight."

"But Ed—"

But Ed gives him no time to finish. Instead he surges forward, racing towards his brother who jumps out of the doorway. They spin and fly as he tries to take his little brother out, flashes of metal in the bright afternoon sun. The glow of the sky glints off the steel of Al's armor and Ed's automail like sparkling deep sea treasure.

"Brother, please," Al protests continuously, "you're going to reopen your wounds!"

Ed smirks and leaps again, trying to take his brother to the ground.

Al fights back, but hesitantly from his stance. He never moves offensively, instead always moving only in the defense. He won't attack head on, but he'll parry and protect.

It's funny the way things work. This now, their little improvised sparring match on the roof, says so much more about how Al really feels than the envy-soaked words in the hospital room a couple minutes before. If Al didn't care, if he really thought he wasn't real, then he wouldn't be fighting with so much caution, fighting so gentle and constantly warning Ed about not injuring himself further.

Al cares, he always has, and Ed knows this.

It was right to say that actions speak louder than words. Words are like hot flashes, there and then instantly gone. Words don't speak very loudly at all.

From the corner of his eye, Ed catches a glimpse of the snapping linens again and knows what he must do. Jumping back, he brings the fight in that direction, and then like the child from so many years before, he hides among them like they did with Mom.

For a moment this confuses Al and Ed uses the momentary disorientation to make his move.

With both his hands he grabs one of the bed sheets and springing forwards, pulls it over the head of his brother.

Al cries out as the sheet falls over him and Ed jumps again, knocking his brother down with a muffled clatter, cushioned somewhat by the sheet, and lands on top of him triumphant.

Just as quickly as the fight began, it is over.

Al lies sprawled out on the rooftop and Ed lies down opposite of him while Al struggles to pull off the sheet, their heads resting next to each other on the concrete.

"I beat you," Ed says once Al has finally tossed the linen aside. "After all the time I've finally won."

"That was hardly a real fight, you tricked me."

"Oh shut it, Al. I won fair and square and you know it."

Al sighs and Ed knows there is no more fight left in either of them. No more fight for the current sparring match or who the true winner is and no fight left in them from Al's accusation. They're just tired now, tired of always fighting and losing.

"We've always fought," Ed muses. "Ever since we were kids."

"We still are kids, Brother."

Ed takes a deep breath. Maybe they're kids, legally, by the standard of age in this country, but in all truthfulness they haven't been children in a long time. Being a child is a privilege they can no longer afford.

"We fought over a lot of stupid stuff, that's for sure."

"Yeah. Like when we fought over those candy apples at the Fall Festival," Al supplies and Ed thinks back to the warm memory. They'd run out of candy apples that autumn at the carnival and only had one left, which of course Ed and Al couldn't share.

In the end neither of them got the candy apple. The sweet lady at the counter had handed it to Al but when they had begun to fight, Ed had shoved Al and knocked the apple out of his hand, resulting in the apple falling into the mud and disappointment from both parties.

Their fights were different then, not the way of cutting words that can't be taken back that they are now. They used to have the biggest arguments through nothing but sign language. To a stranger it must have looked like an imaginary puppet show was taking place.

They used to shove each other around a lot too. It's easier to get your point across that way when you're just a little kid unable to articulate your true fury.

"Or remember the time we fought about the bunk bed at Teacher's?" Al asks.

"Yeah, or that fight we had during training and wouldn't even look at each other for two whole days until Teacher forced us to spend the whole days doing chores together?"

"What about that time you wouldn't let me keep that poor, starving cat I found?'

"Which time? We fight about cats once a month it seems."

Al laughs. "I guess we've always fought a lot over stupid stuff."

"Yeah."

Somewhere in the distance a train whistles. The station isn't too far from here and Ed hears as the stream engine pulls its way out of the grips of the depot, chugging its way to some other corner of the country.

Two birds fly overhead, snaking around each other in a spiral and landing on a building nearby.

"So you're telling me all of those memories are fake, that you aren't really a human at all?"

"Sorry."

There's a slight stutter in Al's voice, a hesitancy Ed hasn't heard from his little brother in a long time. It was the way he used to speak, slowly so he could make sure to say all the words right without stumbling over any of the foreign syllables in that first year when his voice had been so small and unused.

Something about that hurts Ed so acutely, like a small papercut across his heart.

Al has every right to get upset, every right to lost control completely from time to time and fly off the handle. Ed knows he does often enough. Never has Ed seen Al that mad before, at least not at him or at the situation of his armor. All of it he's handled with such quiet and such grace that sometimes Ed just wants to antagonize him over it because he _should _ be mad at him, at the armor. Al has every right, more right than most actually, the be mad.

So what happened moments before, the anger he spat just now and the words of absolute poison? They do not come undeserved or unwelcomed. Al was bound to break in such a childish, non-sensical way sometime anyway.

Al doesn't think he isn't human? This anger, this fight within him at Ed, at the world, proves he's human more than anything.

"And what about getting your body back, is that all fake too?"

"No," there's a renew fight in Al's voice this time, but not a fight of anger, rather the fight to push on. A renewed vigor. "I really do want to get my body back."

"Good, because were in this together. It's just you and me, Al, so we have to push on. I know I've promised you a million times I will restore you to your original body, but when I say that I really do mean it with everything in me."

Maybe most their gestures, their biggest and most important, are said more through actions than words. Al standing in front of Ed in danger without thinking, using his massive body as a shield. All the times Ed has patted Al's metal head as a display of admiration and love. All of it is said so silently.

But there are some things, like now when Al is filled with so many shadowy qualms and so many words have been said that can longer be unspoken, that it is better to hear out loud how much they care for each other. Sometimes it needs to be expressed with absolute certainty so they cannot forget.

Ed hold out his metal fist into the air, pointed in Al's direction. "We're all we've got in this world, little brother."

Al reaches up a matching hand, so much bigger than Ed's that it completely dwarves his, but matches in the same metal material.

"Right."

Their fists bump and Ed hears the clank of his metal wrist and smiles.

Right.


End file.
